Compound butter (a mixture of butter, herbs, and spices) is an excellent way to add flavor and moisture to any grilled steak or seafood, and it’s so easy to make.
Your family and friends will be impressed at the sight of a perfectly grilled steak or piece of fish with a disc of compound butter on top, melting slowly over the meat—and the flavor will blow-away their taste buds!
Components Of Compound Butter
Compound butter consists of a good quality softened butter and any of the following mixed in:
Herbs (minced fine) and spices (freshly ground or cracked), e.g. garlic, onion, shallots, ginger, citrus zest, peppers, etc.
Salt, to taste.
Acid, often lemon juice or vinegar, to balance the flavors.
Sweet, rarely used, but might include honey, agave, maple, etc.
Exotic ingredients, rarely used, like black truffles.
I’ll bet you’ve never grilled rhubarb. Well, I hadn’t either until recently when I listened to an interview with Tinky Weisblat, author of Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb. She was talking about the versatility of rhubarb as an ingredient in not only pies but cocktails, appetizers, and main courses, and at one point she mentioned that rhubarb can be grilled.
Who knew? I thought I’d give it a try.
Buy & Prepare The Rhubarb
This is what rhubarb looks like at my supermarket. It’s several individual stalks bound together with ties. They come in different sizes; I bought a small bundle of four stalks to experiment with. Continue reading Grilled Rhubarb→
A cedar-planked goat cheese appetizer is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about a pre-meal snack. Those who know me know that I’m more likely to grab a handful of potato chips or a slice of cheddar cheese on a Ritz cracker than head for the grilled goat cheese.
But here it was, Mother’s Day 2018. Time to do something new and different. A cedar-planked goat cheese appetizer that looks great, tastes great, and is easy to prepare on the road at Mom & Dad’s house on their Weber Genesis 2 gas grill. Continue reading Cedar-Planked Goat Cheese Appetizer Three Ways→
In a previous post, I wrote about the two types of skirt steak—outside skirt steak and inside skirt steak—and showed an example of grilling inside skirt steak with a spicy Korean marinade on my Weber Summit 450 gas grill.
In that post, I casually mentioned that both cuts of skirt steak can be a very long piece of meat (especially the more desirable outside skirt steak) and that it can be advantageous to cut it into smaller pieces before marinating and grilling.
I wanted to show you an example of a really long piece of outside skirt steak, one that I bought recently at a quality butcher counter here in San Jose. Continue reading Skirt Steak: Part 2→
I’ve tried making pizza a few times on the grill, but it always seems like a big hassle. I don’t want to make my own dough, I don’t want to track down ready-made dough at the supermarket, I’m not a big fan of those bready pre-made crusts…and don’t get me started on pizza stones!
In a post last week, I encouraged you to try grilling a USDA Prime tri-tip roast. As long as I’m on a Prime meat kick, I’d like to suggest that you try the harder to find but oh so delicious USDA Prime ribeye cap steak, also available from time to time and in limited quantities at Costco.
In May 2017, I watched a Facebook Live session in which Harry Soo of Slap Yo’ Daddy BBQ grilled a steak using shallot oil as an added flavor element. I had no idea what shallot oil was, how it was made, or how it tasted on a steak, but I wanted to find out.
I searched the web, found several recipes for shallot oil, and picked one from New York Times Cooking that looked easy.
1 cup peanut oil
2 cups (about 7 oz.) thinly sliced shallots, Asian or European
Yield: 1 cup oil + 1 cup fried shallots
Shallots at the supermarket
I went to the supermarket and bought 1/2 pound of shallots, which ended up being two shallots. No clue whether they were Asian or European, but I suspect the latter. Having never cooked with shallots before, I had no idea they would be as big as they were; I was expecting something smaller like a head of garlic. Continue reading Bone-In Strip Steaks With Shallot Oil→
I had heard of smashed burgers in the past. I’ve eaten at a fast-food chain called “Smashburger” but didn’t think much of it. When I was a teenager, I worked the grill at Wendy’s and part of the process was to smash the burgers on the flat-top using a trowel-like spatula. And yes, I am aware that the venerable Steak ‘n Shake has been smashing Steakburgers on the flat-top since 1934.
But it wasn’t until The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board member BFletcher started asking about sturdy spatulas for making smashed burgers that I started to investigate these flattened meat marvels. What caught my attention was an article by J. Kenji López-Alt on Serious Eats about making ultra-smashed cheeseburgers. Armed with this info, I successfully made delicious smashed burgers using my Weber gas grill. Let me show you how.
