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Flat Iron Steak Redo
In August 2018, I had a few issues grilling a flat iron steak and wrote about it in one of my posts. Two years passed and I completely forgot about that experience. I’m standing at the butcher counter in 2020, I see a flat iron steak, and I think I should try grilling one and posting about it here. Not until I started writing this post did I discover I’d cooked and posted about flat iron steak before!
Well, I’m happy to report that I had a better experience with flat iron steak this time.
If you don’t know much about flat iron steak, you can read about the origins of this cut of meat in my previous post.
First, I upped the grilling temperature…preheated for 15 minutes, two burners on MEDIUM-HIGH, one burner on LOW, and one burner OFF to create a hot direct zone and a cooler indirect zone in case I needed it. Turned out I didn’t need it. I seasoned the meat with Susie Q’s Santa Maria Style Seasoning and let it rest at room temp for 1 hour. Continue reading Flat Iron Steak Redo
Pork Secreto
What Is Pork Secreto?
I noticed this interesting cut of pork in the fresh meat counter at Belcampo Meat Co. in Palo Alto, CA (before the location closed in March 2019). The butcher said it was equivalent to “pork brisket”, a “butcher’s secret” that they grilled for themselves behind the restaurant.
Good enough for them? Good enough for me!
When I got home, I searched the Interweb and found several definitions for pork secreto: the aforementioned pork brisket; pork skirt steak; a strip of pork hidden under belly fat; a cut that resides behind the shoulder; and a cut between the shoulder, ribs, and fatback.
So maybe “pork secreto” can be any number of things. In the end, I trusted the butcher that fabricated and sold the cut, as well as my own eyes, and decided that it looked like a tiny brisket weighing 1.25 pounds.
The butcher said this was a Duroc-Berkshire crossbreed, so a quality piece of pork.
It consists of two parts, like a beef brisket, but in the opposite configuration. In a beef brisket, the fatty portion comes from the chest and the lean portion is towards the belly. In a pork secreto, the fatty portion comes from the belly and the lean portion comes from the chest as part of the picnic…or so I’ve read. Continue reading Pork Secreto
Video: How To Replace The Regulator In A Weber Genesis 1000 Propane Gas Grill
In this video I demonstrate how to replace the regulator in a Weber Genesis 1000 propane gas grill. It’s a project that anyone can do!
I also discuss options for adapting old “quick connect” regulators to modern QCC-1 propane tanks.
Impossible Burgers On The Weber Gas Grill
Introduction
In July 2019, I post a video review of the Impossible Burger at Burger King. The flavor was OK. The problem was the degree to which it was cooked. Two of the three burgers I tried were extremely dark on the outside, almost to the point of being burned, and they were not moist and juicy.
At the time of that video, raw Impossible Burger was not widely available in supermarkets. In the video, I commented that someday I’d like to get my hands on some and try cooking it on my Weber gas grill.
Well, that day arrived in July 2020.
I was doing my weekly grocery shopping at Safeway and noticed a display of raw Impossible Burger in the meat department, a 12-ounce package selling for $14.99! (At the time of writing this, just one month later, this same package sells for $9.99 at Safeway and $7.94 at Walmart.) I gulped hard, added a package to my cart, and headed to the checkout stand.
Review: Impossible Burger At Burger King
In July 2019, I posted a video review of the Impossible Burger at Burger King. In the video, you can see how the Impossible Burger compares to a regular beef burger on The Whopper.
In the video, I mentioned that someday I’d like to get my hands on some raw Impossible Burger and grill it at home using my Weber gas grill. That day came in July 2020 when I found some at my local supermarket.
You can read about my experience grilling Impossible Burgers here:
Mold, Mice & Rats in Weber Gas Grills
You’ve got your steaks seasoned and ready for the grill. You go out to the patio, remove the grill cover, and open the lid.
What greets you is a colony of fuzzy white/green mold on the grates and certain areas of the firebox. Or worse, a fuzzy creature of a different sort, the kind with eyes and nose and whiskers and tail, that’s sitting on the Flavorizer bars, staring up at you through the cooking grates, just as surprised to see you as you are to see him.
Put those steaks back in the refrigerator. You’ve got work to do before you’ll be ready to cook.
It’s no fun to find mold or a live or dead critter in your grill, but it happens. I’ve discovered a live rat making its home inside the cookbox of my gas grill, with feces and urine and footprints all over the exterior of the grill. Gross, for sure, but no reason to throw your grill to the curb.
Both mold and critters thrive on the grease and bits of leftover food found in a dirty grill. For mice and rats, it’s also about building a safe, cozy home within the confines of your grill.
So what should you do to put your grill back into service? And how do you prevent it from happening again in the future?
Read on to find out.
Brats In Secret Stadium Sauce
I was gifted a bottle of Secret Stadium Sauce by my discussion forum friend Jim Lampe when we met up for a Milwaukee Brewers Spring Training game in Arizona in March 2020…right before all hell broke loose with the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you’re a Brewers fan and have attended games at Miller Park or the old Milwaukee County Stadium, you know all about Secret Stadium Sauce. You may even have a bottle of it lurking somewhere in your refrigerator. The story goes that one day back in the early 1970s, the ballpark food vendor was running out of ketchup and mustard, so they took what little they had left and mixed it into barbecue sauce, added a few spices and other ingredients, and Secret Stadium Sauce was born and has been a fan favorite ever since.
I’d never heard of this sauce, but had a chance to try it on a grilled hot dog at the spring training ballpark in Arizona. It tastes like a tomato-based barbecue sauce but with unique spices. Jim uses Secret Stadium Sauce plus beer as a bath for grilled bratwurst and shared his method in a post on The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board. I decided to follow his lead with my bottle of sauce. Continue reading Brats In Secret Stadium Sauce
Review: SLOTDOG Hot Dog Slicing Tool
I got hooked on spiral-sliced hot dogs a couple of years ago after serving them to guests at a July 4 party. You can learn more about spiral-sliced hot dogs here.
So when I saw this gadget called SLOTDOG on Amazon.com, I thought I’d give it a try. SLOTDOG cuts a crosshatched pattern into both sides of a hot dog, creating little squares that open up and char during grilling.
Is a SLOTDOG hot dog more fun than a regular hot dog? Does it taste better? How does it compare to a spiral-sliced hot dog?
Watch my video review to find out. Continue reading Review: SLOTDOG Hot Dog Slicing Tool
Ground Beef Is Brown Inside. Is It Safe?
Red = Good. Brown = Bad. Right?
You associate bright cherry red color with the freshness of ground beef, right? That’s what we all look for when shopping at the supermarket. Faced with a choice between a package of bright red meat and a package of brownish meat, you go for the red meat every time.
But when you get home and crack open the package only to find brown meat under that bright red layer of exterior meat, what’s up with that? Has the supermarket wrapped fresh meat around old meat? Has the meat spoiled?
Short Answer: Do not fear. The meat is fine.
Long Answer: Continue reading to find out what’s going on.