Filet Mignon

This isn’t my first steak post. But it’s by far the best example I have of cooking steaks recently. And the photos are much better than my last steak cook.

We picked up some USDA Choice Filets at CostCo recently. Filet is really the leanest cut of steak that I like. It’s super tender on its own and it doesn’t take a lot of special effort to make consistently great steak. Once you pin down the technique on this, it will ruin you for steaks almost anywhere. For this recipe, make sure that your steaks are a minimum of 1.5″ thick.

Ingredients:

• Filet mignon
• Soy based marinade (Dale’s, etc)
• Salt
• Black peppercorns
• Cast iron skillet
• Butter

Marinate the steaks (optional):

1. Pour enough marinade to cover half the steak or so into a Zip Loc bag.

2. Close the Zip Loc bag.

3. Let the steaks marinate for 90 minutes or so. Turn the steaks half way through.

Remove the steaks from marinade:

1. Blot the steaks dry with a paper towel.

2. Cover the steaks.

3. Leave the steaks out for an hour or so to let them reach room temperature.

While you wait on the steaks to reach room temperature, go ahead and prepare the Big Green Egg:

1. Setup the Egg for direct heat.

2. Start fire and preheat grill to a dome temperature of about 300F.

Once the grill is ready, add the steaks:

1. Add the steaks in the reverse order you want to pull them off. This is not exactly an exact science. We tend to cook with 8 to 9 oz filets. Place the steaks as far away from open flame as possible. I like my steak rare to medium rare. My wife likes hers about medium. For practical purposes, hers warms up at this low temperature for about 35 minutes. Mine is more like 15 minutes.

2. Remove steaks from fire. Sprinkle salt liberally. Crack fresh black peppercorns over the surface of the meat. Place on a warm plate and wrap in foil.

3. Remove the DMFT entirely and open the bottom vent fully. You’re shooting for a target temperature of at least 600F.

Heat cast iron skillet:

1. I don’t actually use a cast iron skillet, but I have no idea where you can find the iron grilling plates I do use.

2. Cut up a couple Tbsp of regular, salted butter.

3. Put the skillet on the grill and let the butter get hot and melty-sizzly. You’re ready to add the steaks when it sounds like your grill is cheering for you.

Sear:

1. Once the butter is melted and sizzling, put each filet down. Close the grill.

2. Wait 2 minutes and flip. Close grill again.

3. Wait two more minutes and remove from the grill.

4. Put them on a second, clean warm plate. Wrap in foil and let rest for 5 minutes prior to serving.

Enjoy:

While the steaks warmed, we grilled buttered corn on the cob, wrapped in aluminum foil and cooked over direct heat directly over the fire itself. We also served the steaks with black-eyed peas this time.

Rare!

Grilled Pizza!

There’s a new favorite meal around the house. I was given a 12″ baking stone for the Egg for Christmas and we’ve generally worked out the kinks of how to make really awesome pizza at home. We tend to pick up fresh balls of dough at the local supermarket, but you can buy the pre-made pizza crusts to save time. Once you get the hang of this, you can run a pizza through the Egg every 8 minutes or so. The best part is, even if your fire burns down and your grill temperature drops to 400 or so, you could still cook a frozen DiGiorno at that temp. It just takes longer at a lower temp. We took different pictures each time we’ve made pizza. So the raw pizza (pepperoni and basil) and the finished pizza (pancetta and olives) look a little different.

Equipment:

A Big Green Egg

The Platesetter

A pizza stone rated for higher than oven temperatures. Your Pampered Chef pizza stone may seem like a good idea, but you will probably crack it the first time you use it.

A pizza peel (stainless steel, wood, bamboo)

Ingredients:

Pizza dough

Olive oil

Minced garlic

Pizza sauce

Mozzarella cheese

Pizza toppings

Parmesan cheese

The dough :

1. If you’re using a ball of dough, it needs time to warm up before you handle it. The directions printed on the package recommend leaving it out for an hour or so before starting to work with it.

2. Spread cornmeal on the pizza peel to prevent the dough from sticking. Have flour on hand for your hands.

3. Stretch the dough to roughly the size of the pizza stone. You want your pizza to be roughly circular. A little overhang will char the edge of the crust. But don’t worry, no overhang will still leave you with plenty of crunch to your crust.

4. If this gives you fits, take a rolling pin, drop flour on it so it doesn’t stick to your dough and just roll it out into a circle shape. You can work the dough to death, so roll it out before that happens. I am BAD at this. The wife is Sicilian and, I think, she came pre-engineered to stretch pizza dough almost effortlessly.

Setup the Egg:

1. Open your Egg. Load it with lump charcoal. Light the fire. Ultimately, you’ll be setting up for indirect heat, but first you want to get it really hot.

2. Leave the bottom vent all the way open. Leave the DFMT top off of the Egg. You want to permit as much airflow as possible to raise the temperature.

3. Let it get REALLY hot. Like 700F hot.

4. Place the platesetter, feet down and pizza stone together on top of the fire ring. You want them to preheat at the same time. While your grill is open, dust some cornmeal across the top of the pizza stone to prevent the pizza from sticking while it cooks.

5. Close the Egg and let it re-preheat. You will have dropped to 500 to 550F adding the platesetter. Ideally, a good pizza oven is 600F+.

6. Once you reach 600F and hold it for 15 minutes or so, add the DMFT top. You’ll retain heat fine once the ceramic gets this hot and stays there.

Assemble the pizza:

1. Brush olive oil and minced garlic over the surface of the pizza dough or crust.

2. Spoon a couple Tbsp of pizza sauce and brush it over the olive oil. Use more if you like more sauce. Sprinkle with some Parmesan if you like.

3. Add your toppings. Add vegetables first. Add meats (except for pepperoni/bacon type meats).

4. Add mozzarella chesse. Grab a handful and sprinkle it over the entire pizza. Don’t worry if it hangs off the edge. This is a good thing.

5. Add pepperoni and ham/bacon type meats. Sprinkle lightly with additional mozzarella and Parmesan.

Cook the pizza:

1. Take the pizza out to the Egg and shimmy the pizza off of the pizza peel and onto the baking stone.

2. Close the Egg.

3. Just like a DiGiorno in the oven, you’re looking to see the crust start to brown and the cheese to melt. I sometimes remove the DMFT and shine a flashlight down into the cooking chamber to look without opening the lid.

4. At 600F, this should take no more than about 6 to 8 minutes.

5. Take a spatula and the pizza should lift up off the stone and you can slide it back onto the pizza peel to carry inside. Shimmy the finished pizza off of the pizza peel and onto a cutting board.

6. Wait 5 minutes or so and slice the pizza. Top with additional parmesan cheese to taste.

The pizza below has pancetta, black olives, green peppers and onion.

Setup the BGE for direct cooking

I have a good friend who recently received a Big Green Egg as a Christmas gift. He’s without prep space at the moment as he and his wife have been remodeling their kitchen and I am sad for his Egg as it sits lonely on his patio, all white and pristine. I thought I’d toss him a bone on the burn in procedure for the Egg and realized that, while I had a blog post for indirect heat, I hadn’t done one for direct heat. Although the Egg is made to cook at 700-800F, it does not come prepared to handle that sort of temperature. If you let it get that hot the first time, you’ll burn your gasket off and you run the risk of cracking some of that lifetime warranty ceramic.

Step 1. A (relatively) clean Big Green Egg.

2. Pour natural lump charcoal until the fire bowl is full of coal. Use the ash tool to clear out a small hole in the middle of the pile of coals. Please ignore that I used smoke wood and an electric starter. In real life, the new EggHead will be using fire starters.

3. Light one of the Fire Starters. Drop it in the hole in the top of the coals. This will serve to light several of the coals, but still give you the ability to control the airflow as the fire takes off and you need to regulate the temperature. Open the bottom and top vents all the way for maximum air flow. As you are using Fire Starters, go ahead and drop the cooking grid into place and close the lid.

4. Let the grill pre-heat. Do not leave the grill unattended. You’ll want to start adjusting the vents when you get within 25 – 50 degrees of your intended temperature. For an initial burn in, you’re looking to let the Egg burn for an hour or so at 350F to 400F. Start by closing the lower vent to about the half way point as you pass 300F. Close the DMFT so that the small vent holes are all the way open, but the large opening is all the way closed. Pro tip: Keep the two screws in your DMFT lined up and on the same plane as your Egg opens. This will keep you from having to reset it every time that you need to open the Egg to flip your meat. Don’t leave it open for too long because a), your fire will get away from you. And b), if you’re looking, you ain’t cooking!

5. Watch the dome thermometer. It will fluctuate as your temperature stabilizes. If it drops below 350, open the lower vent very slightly. If it gets above 400, close the lower vent very slightly. It will take a few minutes for your adjustments to reflect in the dome temperature. Feel free to play with the DMFT vents as well and you’ll start to get a feel for how temperature control works. You should be able to dial in dome temperatures to within 10-25 degrees or so of a target with a little practice. For direct cooking purposes, 10-25 degrees might as well be on target.

6. After the grill has burned for an hour or so, close the bottom vent. Remove the DMFT. And put the ceramic top over the top vent. This will choke out the fire and leave you with coal for your next cook.

This same technique can be used for cooking at temperatures anywhere between about 300F and 800F. You can cook pork chops, steaks, burgers, chicken breasts, fish, kebabs, vegetables and just about anything else using this method. Until you have the platesetter, direct cooking is really your only option. Cook on the Egg two or three times in the neighborhood of 400F (grilled chicken, pork chops, fish, etc) before trying to sear a Ribeye at 750F.

Baked apples

This recipe is a composite of several different recipes that my wife found online. She made these last night when we served Sweet Tea Brined Pork Tenderloin to houseguests. Apple typically complements pork well in general, so these would also pair well with Pork Chops, or even Pulled Pork. Note: I am a carnivore by nature and believe fruit to be an affront to God. I am, specifically, not a fan of mushy, baked apples (outside of apple pie) and even I thought these were a great addition to the meal.

Ingredients:
2 baking apples (we used Braeburn)
2 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise pods (Pro Tip: You’ll find anise seed on the spice aisle of your supermarket, but I found the whole 8 pointed pods on the Latin food aisle.)
1/2 teaspoon all-spice
Extra cinnamon for flavor
2 cups apple cider
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup butter

Preparation:
1.Preheat oven to 325.
2. Wash and cut apples in half top to bottom, then remove core, seeds and stems. Dip in lemon juice to prevent browning or wait to cut and core until step 3 is completed. Place cut side down in baking dish.
3. Simmer cloves, cinnamon sticks, star anise, allspice, apple cider, apple vinegar, and butter on stove top for about 5 minutes until butter is melted completely.
4. Sprinkle apples with cinnamon then ladle liquid mixture over apples.
5. Bake about 30 minutes or until semisoft. Keep warm until serving or reheat.

Sweet Tea Brined Pork Tenderloin

So today comes a new “inspired” recipe. This recipe was inspired by a trip to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel for the annual Christmas lights, shopping, engagement commemoration, etc trip that the wife and I take every year. We ate at the Cascades American Cafe restaurant there and I had their Sweet Tea Pork Tenderloin. They served it with finger potatoes and baby greens over a stone ground mustard sauce. The broccolini pictured below actually came from my wife’s Prime Rib Country Christmas feature that night. Add in a Maker’s Mark Manhattan and it was a pretty fantastic dinner.

I enjoyed dinner so much (sweet tea, bourbon and pork? yes, please!) that I came home from Nashville scouring the interwebs for a recipe. And I found SaraPLicious (apologies if I have capitalized this improperly) and her Sweet Tea Brined Pork Loin. When I found out she made hers in the oven, I decided immediately that I was going to have to try making one in the Egg.  Her recipe modified to cook on an Egg is covered below.

Ingredients:
2 lbs pork loin
8 cups sweet tea
1/2 cup sea salt
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp light brown sugar
1 Tsp minced garlic
Brining:
Whisk together sweet tea and salt in a large container. Pour into a one gallon Zip Loc bag.
Add pork and brine in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours.

Cooking:
Remove the pork from the original Zip Loc bag. Discard the remaining liquid.
Blot meat dry with a paper towel.
Whisk mustard, brown sugar and garlic together in a small bowl. In my case, I used a second 1 gallon Zip Loc bag.
Put pork loin into the second bag. Close the zipper and make like the little girl on the Shake and Bake commercials. This should leave you with an even coat of mustard and brown sugar covering the entire pork loin well.
Let meat sit for 15 minutes on the V-Rack placed on an otherwise empty drip pan. Cover until it’s ready to go over the fire.

Setup the Egg for indirect heat and preheat it to 400F. Cook the pork until the internal temperature reads 160F. The 2.00 lb pork loin I used took right at an hour and 15 minutes. I followed Sara’s directions recommending that you turn the meat halfway through the cooking time.
Remove from oven, tent with aluminum foil and let rest for 15 minutes.
Slice.

Rather than serving ours with baby greens and finger potatoes, we went with black eyed peas and brown rice pilaf. The pork has a sweet, crisp exterior and retains its moisture on the inside.

Thanksgiving Day

So, we made it. And the results were better this time around.

For starters, I found a better brining bag. An actual zipper bag made for that. It was much sturdier and larger, so it held up to more abuse.

I left the ice packs on the breasts for about 30 minutes this time instead of 15 to 30. I also iced them prior to brushing on the olive oil, black pepper and garlic powder.

And last, I used a full load of coal. So no trouble maintaining the temperature for the duration of the cook.

The first pic is after about 2 hours. I went ahead and tented the bird with foil at that point. The second is after about 3 hours and 10 minutes, right before letting it rest. After the 15 minute rest, I carved it immediately.

T minus 13 hours

Well, the Thanksgiving turkey has been brining for about 3 hours now. I’ve gone ahead and loaded the Egg with more coal than the last cook. The coal is well above the top of the fire bowl this time around.

Given the results of a 10 lb turkey taking about 2.5 hours, I’m expecting the 13.5 lb bird to cook for about 3.5 hours tomorrow. Maybe as much as 4 hours. I guess we’ll see.

I’ve been asked to carve up the bird before leaving the house tomorrow. So, the plan is for a pretty early morning tomorrow. Lunch is planned for 1 pm. To give myself time for the turkey to run long, I’ll probably start the fire by 7 am.