Help keep AmazingRibs free!
With a $25 donation you'll get a 100% cotton, brushed twill, adjustable, low profile cap with the AmazingRibs.com patch sewn on. I'll even toss in a small bag of BBQ'rs Delight excellent wood smoke pellets.
Click for more info and pictures of the hat.
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QUICK LINKS
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Show Me Yours
| I've been getting wonderful emails and pix from you. Man, you folks
know how to party! Send me pix of your versions of my recipes or your party and I might publish them on my site.
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| Smoke Signals is Free
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About Smoke Signals
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Smoke Signals is the free email from AmazingRibs.com's Barbecue Whisperer and Hedonism Evangelist, Meathead.
If you like my website, please click here to forward a copy of this to a friend. And remember: No rules in the bedroom or dining room!
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Meathead to go Meatless. Call me Potatohead.
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Meathead to go meatless? Call me Potatohead? OK, it's only for 30 days. But why on earth would a barbecue guy nicknamed renounce meat for a month?
In June, in order to better understand the issues surrounding our dietary choices, I wrote an article on Huffington Post called Meat or No Meat. It attempted to explain the pros and cons of eating meat and divided the arguments into six categories. I continue to edit it based on reader comments.
There have been more than 8,000 passionate comments from everyone from cattle ranchers to PETA members. People feel religiously about this subject. I invite you to go there, read it, and join the debate.
Some of the arguments against meat do not impress me. But two give me pause every time I reach for my tongs:
(1) The way most of our beef, pork, fowl, and fish are grown nowadays, in huge factory farms, can be inhumane.
(2) These methods may be harmful to humans.
Of course if every cow and pig in the world were to be raised on a foam bed and slaughtered in a state of ecstasy, it would not change the mind of any vegetarians. But I've read enough to know that things do not have to be that way.
I want to use my prominence in the food community and as a man whose reputation was built on cooking meat, to send a message to the factory farms that I think they can do better and that I am willing to pay more for my meat if it is grown properly.
Click here to read more about my motives and my message on AmazingRibs.com. Click here to read the same article on Huffington Post and reader reaction there. I will blog about my experience on that page and publish my best vegetarian recipes on AmazingRibs.com.
I await your advice and brickbats.
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Fired Up Marvelous Marinara Sauce
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Tomatoes are in season! Gawd I love August! Who needs meat? Here's a recipe for grilled tomato sauce that is rich, complex, and deep, and you can use it on pasta, or in the two recipes below, Grilled Eggplant Parm, and Pizza on the Grill.
Marinara sauce is the great classic Italian tomato sauce from Naples (or maybe even from Spain, but don't say this too loudly in the wrong company or you might find a horsehead in your bed). It is the base sauce (or gravy as my Italian-American in-laws call it) for so many Mediterranean dishes. It is so easy to make, and it freezes well, so there is no reason to every buy it in a jar again. If you have a recipe that needs it, you can make it a day or two in advance and keep it in the fridge. The secret to my recipe is that almost everything in it is grilled first. And my recipe begins by grilling tomatoes.
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| Ciao Down Grilled Eggplant Parm |
|  Eggplants are in season, and if you love "Eggplant Parmesan" as served in most restaurants, you are in for a treat, because this simple grilled version just kicks butt.
Most of the time the eggplant is breaded and fried. The problem is that eggplant is like a sponge and it soaks up enough grease to slick back Fonzi's hair. Then it is buried in canned red sauce and cheese that is one electron from being plastic. The frying completely masks the flavor of the eggplant and stringy pizza cheese adds nothing but chewiness and calories.
Great Eggplant Parm should taste like, well, eggplant, tomatoes, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. We get there by grilling the eggplant rather than frying it, using real Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese from Italy vastly superior to American parm), making our own fresh grilled tomato sauce, and amping it up with fresh basil and oregano. Trust me, once you try this recipe you'll never settle for the greasy plasticky stuff again.
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Grilled Pizza. No Equal.
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Grilled pizza comes closer to the brick oven pizza you get in Naples than anything you can do indoors, and it beats the snot out of the stuff that arrives steamed and soggy in the cardboard box.
The trick is to get the dough and toppings cooked properly without incinerating the crust or leaving it uncooked.
Some recipes call for you to pre-bake the crust on on the top side, then flip it and put the toppings on the pre-baked side, but there is no need for this if you do things properly. Click here for three grilled pizza recipes: Grilled Pizza Margherita, Neopolitan Capicola Pizza Recipe, and Provençal Caramelized Onion Pizza Recipe.
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My New Favorite Charcoal Grill
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|  For the past six weeks or so I have been having a blast cooking with a shiny new Hasty Bake Gourmet. Bottom line: I have never worked with a finer charcoal grill. It wins a well-deserved Meathead's Hot Stuff Award.
It has a capacious 523 square inches of main grate cooking surface, and 284 square inches on an upper grate.
My favorite feature is the adjustable height charcoal grate. It moves up and down with a crank allowing me to lower the coal grate, push the coals to the right side, fire them up, start a big hunk of beef like a rib roast on the left side of the food grate, then, when I get the meat's interior temp to say 115°F, I can slide it over the coals, crank them up to right below the meat, and brown the exterior as the interior rises to 125°F. This lets it work like a Santa Maria grill, perfect for Tri-Tip, or a closed convection roaster perfect for turkey or chicken. It is very easy to set up for 2-zone indirect cooking and smoke roasting or you can just crank it all the way up to sear a steak in a hurry. This system gives you very good temp control. Click here to read my full review.
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The Coolest Email I've Ever Gotten
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|  Just got an email from Harry Soo of SlapYoDaddyBBQ.com, the hottest cook on the competition circuit and well know LA area barbecue instructor (and he cooks on inexpensive Weber Smokey Mountains with whatever charcoal is on sale!):
"We've won 5 Grand Championships and 2 Reserve Championships [second place] the past three months. Loved your site for years. Learned much about BBQ from you and wanted to give you credit. Your site has loads of objective info and it has helped me greatly. You have put it together in one convenient spot." That's like an All Star saying he's picked up some swing tips from you!
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Gooey Grilled Cheese on the Grill
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Dunno why they call it "grilled" cheese 'cause most of the time it is made in a frying pan or a broiler or a toaster oven or a panini press or a George Foreman gizmo or a griddle. Ever have one made on a grill? Well you're in for a treat. Do it outdoors and you'll taste the ne plus ultra grilled cheese with golden bread, dark grill marks, and gooey cheese.
In this article I give you the concepts and a basic recipe, but there's plenty of room for you to riff on the theme. After all, the French classic croque-monsieur made with ham and brie is a variant, as is the Reuben, the tuna melt, and even the patty melt. Here are the secrets to success.
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Upload Pictures of Your Masterpieces
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|  Last month I got fed up with IntenseDebate, the service who managed the software for you to add comments to my articles. I gave them the boot and installed Echo and boy am I happy. It works a little differently, but the best feature is you can now upload pictures of your masterpieces hot off the grill. Show us your stuff! Here are Scott Wright's baby backs.
Speaking of comments, this note came in recently about my Tennessee Hollerin Whiskey Barbecue Sauce from Steve Marktay and it had me snorting Jack Black out my nose: "Meathead, I tried making this sauce early in the recipe you said to sample the whisky to make sure it was good i tasted it, bout 3 oz, but wasn't sure so i asked my friend, he tasted it and reported a certain taste and convinced me to try it again to see if i could detict what he thought he did. we could not agree so we called his cousin over to help, he has lots of experiance in tasting whiskey, not only did he come but he brought several brands of whiskey so we could compare them and pick just the right one. the compairing went on all afternoon into the night. we tested lots of whiskey the only problem is we don't remeber which we liked the best so i quess we'll have to start the process over again. we wound using store bought sauce but i promise to stay after this until i get it just right and will report back later." He never did email me back... |
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Fun Gifts for the Barbecue Fan
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| Visit the AmazingRibs.com Gift Shop for a chuckle. There are more than 30 BBQ-themed designs, about 30 steak-themed designs, about 20 hotdog-themed designs, and more than 30 wine-themed designs. Order aprons, hats, shirts, sweatshirts, intimate wear, and
other apparel for men, women, kids and pets, beer mugs, posters, and
other tschotschkes.
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