grilling

Simple Grilled Chicken Drumsticks

Drumsticks are a great cut of chicken. My three-year-old son loves them, since they come with “handles” and he gets to eat with his hands. To celebrate these little legs I decided to write up a quick, foolproof recipe for grilling drumsticks.

They are also one of the easiest and most rewarding pieces of chicken to grill, because it’s hard to mess them up. Chicken breasts are great, but they have a very small window of juiciness, and will dry up quicker than a jackrabbit in a thunderstorm. Whole chickens are also fun to grill, but are best when brined, which can take some time and planning. Thighs are another good option, but let’s be honest here – they’re just not as fun as drumsticks.

Read Full Article

Shashlik (Russian Shish Kebabs)

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Shashlik (Шашлык) is a type of shish kebab commonly found in Russia and the former Soviet republics. It was likely brought to Moscow from Central Asia in the 19th century. Today, it’s a popular summer food cooked over an open fire at social gatherings. It’s traditionally prepared with lamb, but chicken, pork, and beef variations are becoming increasingly prominent. With summer in full swing throughout the country right now, I thought it would be a great time to share this tasty dish!

There are a few tricks that I came up with when developing this recipe that I think are pretty sweet. While the dish is traditionally marinated in either vinegar or lemon juice, I found that the combination of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar gives the meat a tangy and subtly sweet flavor. Secondly, leaving the salt out of the marinade and saving it for the last stage of the recipe provides for a really great complementary texture to the tender and juicy meat.

Read Full Article

Memphis-Style Barbecue Beef Back Ribs

US Wellness Meats recently asked me to make a recipe for their beef back ribs, and I was happy to oblige (note: don’t ever turn down ribs). Little did I know, I was in for a surprise: this package, which included four racks of ribs, weighed in at SIXTEEN POUNDS of beefy goodness. I immediately knew that I had to call in for backup to give these monsters the attention they deserved.

Enter my friend Jeremy from SeaDog BBQ. SeaDog BBQ is a locally-based Kansas City Barbeque Society competition team, and they’ve done pretty well here in Maryland against some very talented teams. Not only did he come up with an awesome sugar-free barbecue rub recipe to accompany these beef ribs, he brought over his own smoker! While his smoker is from a small, locally-produced source, he did mention that the Weber Smokey Mountain is one of the best introductory smokers that are commercially available. If you don’t own a smoker, never fear – I added tips on how to replicate this recipe using a grill.

Okay, enough with the background, on to the ribs! For this recipe we cooked two of the racks, totaling eight pounds. We opted for a dry, sauceless cooking method, typical of Memphis-style barbecue, with an hour’s braise in the middle to speed up the cooking process and to keep the ribs juicy and full of beefy flavor.

Read Full Article

Lemon and Dill Smoked Chicken

For Thanksgiving last year, I roasted/smoked our turkey. It turned out so crispy and delicious that lately I’ve been smoking our chickens using the same method. This recipe isn’t terribly different from that turkey post, but I wanted to make sure it had its own dedicated post so that visitors can quickly find it.

I did a little experimenting and found that the combination of lemon and dill – traditionally used in baked salmon – creates a tangy, fresh tasting bird. Because I smoked this chicken during our January Whole30 Challenge, I tried rubbing clarified butter all over the chicken instead of regular butter – I found it easy to work with (the butter quickly became solid again once in contact with the chicken skin), and it produced a golden protective outer “shell” around the chicken, leaving the meat inside perfectly succulent.

Read Full Article

Paleo Barbecue Sauce

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

We make ribs at the house pretty often, so much so that we seem to always be buying BBQ sauce. Although I like the taste of the all-natural (and unfortunately-named) Bone Suckin’ Sauce, I’ve been wanting to make my own sauce for a while.

Read Full Article

Traditional-cut Korean Short Ribs (Wang Galbi/Kalbi)

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Although flanken-cut short ribs (sometimes called L.A. or English cut ribs) are more commonly found in Korean restaurants today, every so often you’ll find that a chef that prepares kalbi (galbi, 갈비) in the traditional way – by using a full length of rib that’s filleted in layers. This traditional cut is called wang galbi/kalbi, which is literally translated as “king ribs”.

My most recent box of goodies from US Wellness Meats included a package of their delicious beef short ribs. This beautiful one-pound rack was the perfect opportunity to make some “king ribs” of my own.

Read Full Article

Grill-Roasted Turkey

Note: I’ve tweaked this recipe over the years, and HERE is my definitive method/recipe.

For Thanksgiving this year I tried my hand at roasting a turkey on the grill. The resulting bird was crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside, and only took a few minutes longer than roasting it in the oven. Also, adding woods chips imparts an authentic smokey flavor that really made the turkey stand out on the Thanksgiving table. Lastly, it frees up the oven for other endeavors!

Also, when grilling a turkey (or roasting it in the oven, for that matter), you want to use a v-rack (often called a roasting rack). We just started using one recently and it’s amazing how evenly it cooks the bird, since it allows air to circulate around the entire turkey. Depending on how your grill plates run, though, the v-rack may fall through the plates; to prevent this, put the v-rack on a grill pan.

Read Full Article

Teriyaki Chicken

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, summer is a difficult time to write new recipes. We’ve spent a lot of this summer traveling or entertaining guests; when we are home, I usually prefer to grill something, and most of my grilling recipes are already on this site.

However, this has also been a good time for me to try out healthier versions of pre-Paleo dishes, like teriyaki chicken. I grew up in Washington state, where you’ll find an abundance of Asian restaurants selling “teriyaki chicken” – likely influenced by traditional Japanese teriyaki sauce, which is made with soy sauce, cooking wine, and sugar or honey. Hawaii has a similar dish, simply called “BBQ chicken”. Traditionally, the sauce is boiled down and thickened before marinating the meat, but it’s often too long of a prep to cap onto an already long marinating process (2-4 hours). Here’s how I make it at home.

Read Full Article

Roasted Pork Shoulder / Butt

While in Germany last year, I came across a Bavarian dish called “Schweinshaxe” (pork knuckle), which is a ham hock that is boiled and roasted to a crisp. I enjoyed picking apart this barbarian hunk of meat, and I wanted to replicate the experience at home. Since uncured ham hocks are hard to come by, and most butchers would look at you funny if you asked for a pork knuckle, I decided to try out a different cut but with similar result.

I settled on a pork shoulder (same thing as a pork butt), which is easy to find and fairly marbled. Pork shoulder is the cut used in pulled pork, so I thought I would roast a shoulder in the grill but take it off before it starts to fall apart; the outer shell came out deliciously crispy and the meat was juicy and tender.

Read Full Article

Grilled Split Chicken Breasts

Split chicken breasts don’t get any respect. They’re a lot cheaper per pound than boneless, skinless breasts (granted, they weigh more) plus their bones give them a natural grilling “rack” to use, resulting in a better tasting cut of meat. I decided to try out a method of grilling split breasts that I had read about, and here are the results.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I prefer to brine chicken if I’m going to grill it, in order to retain as much liquid as possible. Although it definitely makes the chicken more juicy, it does take a little bit of preparation. I think it’s worth it.

Read Full Article