Does your cast iron skillet smell funky? If so, try this tip from America’s Test Kitchen. Place it in a 400°F grill or oven for about 10 minutes. This burns off the oxidized fatty acids left behind from cooking that cause the odor.
Let the pan cool until still warm but safe to handle. Apply a thin coat of vegetable oil to the pan, removing any excess with paper towels. Your skillet is ready to go!
This method works for all cast iron skillets, pots, Dutch ovens, griddles and bakeware.
There’s a new crop of grilling books out for 2015. You may already be aware of some of these, some maybe not. All of these look interesting to me, take a look for yourself and if you’ve read any of them, let us know on The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board.
The Ultimate Book of BBQ builds on the expertise of Southern Living magazine to create the definitive barbecue and outdoor grilling guide. The book features more than 200 of the highest-rated Southern Living recipes for barbecued meats and sides, plus pit-proven tips, techniques, and secrets for year-round smoking, grilling and barbecuing.
John Wayne Enterprises is proud to present The John Wayne Way to Grill, a new cookbook containing more than 200-pages of Duke’s favorite meals, from Tex-Mex classics to the best of Western barbecue and everything in between. More than just a collection of recipes, this deluxe publication will be chock-full of never-before-seen photos of the actor, along with personal anecdotes and heartwarming stories shared by his son Ethan.
Wicked Good Burgers ain’t your daddy’s patty on a bun. The upstart Yankee team that revolutionized barbecue with their upset win at the Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational turns their talents to burgers. Wicked Good Burgers fearlessly incorporates new techniques, inspirations, and ingredients to take the burger to the next level – whether it’s the Meatloaf Burger on Pretzel Bread with Cabernet Mustard or the Island Creek Burger with Oysters and homemade cocktail sauce.
In his latest lip-smackin’ cookbook, Dr. BBQ shows how to dress up meat, vegetables, and fruits with 120 brand-new recipes for tantalizing marinades, mouthwatering injections, savory brines, flavorful rubs, delectable glazes, and full recipes for what to make with them.
Joe Carroll makes stellar barbecue and grilled meats in Brooklyn, New York, at his acclaimed restaurants Fette Sau and St. Anselm. In Feeding the Fire, Carroll gives us his top 20 lessons and more than 75 recipes to make incredible fire-cooked foods at home, proving that you don’t need to have fancy equipment or long-held regional traditions to make succulent barbecue and grilled meats.
In years past, Weber offered two types of gas grill covers: Standard-grade made of regular vinyl and premium-grade made of heavy-duty vinyl.
For 2015, Weber has begun the transition to 100% polyester fabric grill covers. The material is more supple than vinyl, staying soft and pliable even in cold weather. It’s also lightweight, making removing and replacing the cover easier than ever. Covers continue to include Velcro straps for tightening the cover when in place.
A new feature is an integrated storage pouch sewn into the cover. The cover can be folded into the pouch for storage, and when not in use the pouch stays hidden out of sight inside the cover. If you cover your grill after each use, it’s unlikely you’ll need the storage pouch. But if you cover your grill only at the end of the grilling season, the pouch may prove to be a handy feature.
Each cover comes with a 3-year warranty for defects in material (but not fading), whereas vinyl versions had a 2-year warranty. Prices are slightly higher for these new covers versus the old ones.
It’s too soon to say how well these new polyester covers will hold up to the elements; only time will tell. As we learn more we’ll be sure to let you know.
At the time of this writing, these polyester gas grill covers are available:
Some covers may fit older grills not listed. Contact Weber Customer Service at 800-446-1071 for assistance. For example, a member of The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board reports that the Model 7106 fits the Genesis 1000 and Genesis Silver A/B grills.
Polyester covers are also available for Weber 18″, 22″ and 26″ kettles and Performer grills.
You don’t find full-service butcher shops around much anymore, but there’s one about 40 miles from my house that sells fresh and smoked meats, sausages, bacon and fish at retail to the public, and butchers animals for ranchers and wild game for hunters. They have a deli counter where you can get a tasty tri-tip sandwich. Best of all, they sell pellet grills in front of the shop, so you know they’re legit.
One of the things this butcher shop is known for is their ready-to-grill marinated meats. A while back, I dropped in and without thinking about it too much bought a bag of marinated skirt steak.
This package of marinated skirt steak weighs 4.32 pounds and sells for $10.50 per pound. I get it. I’m paying a premium price for convenience. Take it home and put it straight on the grill. But just for fun, let’s break it down a bit more.
Here’s how much liquid was left in the bag after I removed the skirt steak. It’s almost 20 fluid ounces—2-1/2 cups. Now, to be fair, some of that liquid is meat juices. Let’s be generous and subtract 20% for meat juices. That leaves 16 fluid ounces of actual marinade.
What does a fluid ounce of this marinade weigh? I don’t know because I didn’t weigh it at the time, but I weighed a similar marinade and it weighs about 1.5 ounces per fluid ounce. So 16 fluid ounces of marinade weighs about 24 ounces or 1-1/2 pounds. At $10.50 per pound, I paid $15.75 for the marinade in the measuring cup.
How does that compare to supermarket marinade? A 16 fluid ounce bottle of marinade at an expensive grocery store might cost $5.99. That’s the equivalent of about $4.00 per pound.
I paid almost four times the price for marinade in the pre-marinated meat than if I had used an expensive supermarket marinade.
The skirt steak came out of the package as one long piece of meat. I cut it into the pieces shown here and patted them dry with paper towels.
Notice those bright red patches? Those are areas where the meat was folded over on itself and the marinade could not reach the meat. The result was uneven marination.
When you let someone else do the marinating for you, you have no control over how they do it. When you do it yourself, you can take steps to ensure that the meat is evenly marinated.
Look at the cut end of this piece of skirt steak. It can’t be more than 1/2 inch thick at most. Who knows how many hours the meat was marinating before I bought it. And skirt steak is not exactly a tight-grained piece of meat. Yet the marinade barely penetrated the surface.
This illustrates and confirms the findings of experts like Cook’s Illustrated magazine that marinades do not deeply penetrate most meats—they only affect the surface and just below the surface.
It cost a lot. It wasn’t evenly marinated. It wasn’t deeply marinated. So how did it turn out? It tasted great.
I grilled the pieces over medium-high heat to medium doneness. The meat was moist and juicy, a bit fatty like a good skirt steak should be, with some crispy edges that were to die for. As for the Asian marinade, it was really delicious and added some good heat.
To be clear, I had absolutely no issues with the quality of this meat or marinade. But will I buy it again? No, because I’m a cheapskate.
Here’s the bottom line: It pays—literally—to consider the real price of convenience before buying pre-marinated meat. Marinating meat is easy to do at home, and you’ll save a ton of money.
If you’re looking for a good book on marinades, consider this new one from “Dr. BBQ” Ray Lampe.
It wasn’t that long ago that for the sake of food safety, the USDA wanted us to cook pork chops and roasts to 160°F . The result: Lots of tough, dry pork all across this great land of ours.
The good news is that a few years ago, the USDA aligned its recommendations for safe pork with what many chefs and food experts had been saying all along: That whole muscle cuts like pork chops, pork loin roasts, and pork tenderloin are safe when cooked to 145°F—a full 15°F lower than the old recommendation.
Bruce Aidells, author of The Great Meat Cookbook, suggests cooking lean cuts of pork to 135-140°F, then removing the meat from the grill and allowing residual heat to bring the final internal temp to 145°F during a short rest before serving.
And there’s no need to worry about trichinosis. That’s something our grandparents used to worry about when it came to pork, but it just doesn’t happen in our domestic pork supply today. Most cases that occur in the U.S.—about 20 per year—are associated with eating raw or undercooked wild game meats. On the grill, cooking pork to an internal temp of 138°F and holding at that temp for a few minutes kills trichinosis. So if you’re finishing pork at 140-145°F you’re good to go.
As always, a good quality instant-read thermometer is the key to achieving food-safe temps when grilling any meat.
In a recent post, I featured a technique for grilling pizza on a Weber Genesis gas grill. Shortly after that post, America’s Test Kitchen Radio reviewed the Baking Steel by Stoughton Steel. They say it’s far superior to a pizza stone and helps you make pizza as crispy as any pizzeria out there.
The Baking Steel is a 1/4″ thick piece of steel measuring 16″ x 14″ and weighing an impressive 15 pounds. It gets so ripping hot that it bakes pizza up to 2x faster than a pizza stone and results in a taller, more crispy crust. It can also double as a griddle.
The Baking Steel by Stoughton Steel is available at Amazon.com.
Recently I was grilling burgers when I lifted the lid and was suddenly reminded of this haiku I wrote in 2014. Please enjoy.
I lift the grill lid
Singeing hairs on my forearm
How I hate that smell
My friend John K likes to make pizzas using his Weber Genesis gas grill with the help of a bread machine for the dough. I’ve eaten his pizza and it is delicious!
Here are the ingredients for three thin crusts:
Follow your bread machine’s directions for making dough using all the ingredients except the corn meal. When done, remove dough from the machine and let rest for 10 minutes, then divide into three equal pieces.
Preheat your gas grill and pizza stone on HIGH heat until very hot, approximately 600-700°F.
Roll-out one piece of dough into a thin crust on a cutting board. When finished rolling, immediately lift the crust and dust the board with corn meal to prevent sticking.
Apply tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and your favorite toppings. Slide the crust onto a thin metal peel (this works better than a thick wooden peel). Open the grill quickly, place the pizza on the stone, and close the lid.
Bake for 7-10 minutes until the crust is crispy and the cheese is bubbly. Check progress with a quick peek under the lid to keep the grill temp up.
Once the first pizza is finished, let the grill temperature recover and repeat the process for the remaining two pizzas.
Here’s a handy temperature guide for the doneness of grilled burgers.
| Burger Doneness | Internal Temp |
| Medium Rare | 125-130*F |
| Medium | 135-140*F |
| Medium Well | 145-160*F |
| Well Done | > 160*F |
If you must grill burgers well done, make a panade by mashing together 1/2 cup cubed white sandwich bread and 2 Tablespoons milk. Mix the panade with 1-1/2 pounds of ground beef and combine thoroughly before forming patties. The panade will keep the burgers moist even when cooked to well done.
Measure internal temperature in the center of the burger using a good quality instant-read thermometer like the ThermoWorks Thermapen.
Apples are a wonderful fruit to grill. You’ve always got some in the fridge, they’re quick and easy to grill, and they taste delicious!
This recipe is adapted from one published in Weber Grill Out Times in the Fall of 1997. You can download copies of this and other classic Weber newsletters at The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board.
For this recipe you’ll need:
Choose an apple that holds up well to baking, for example Granny Smith, Braeburn, Honeycrisp, or Golden Delicious.
In a small bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Preheat grill for 10 minutes, then hit the grates with a grill brush. Setup the grill for indirect medium heat.
Spray the cut side of each apple with non-stick spray. Place apples cut-side down on the grate, brush with sauce, and grill for 10 minutes. Turn apples cut-side up, brush with sauce, and grill another 10 minutes. Turn apples cut-side down one last time, brush with sauce, and grill another 10 minutes.
When finished grilling, apples should have nice grill marks on the cut side, will be slightly soft on the outside, but still crunchy on the inside.
Serve apples warm with a scoop of ice cream on the side.
