Jamison Bill - 100 Grilling Recipes You Cant Live Without

The Harvard Common Press
www.harvardcommonpress.com

Copyright 2013 by Cheryl and Bill Jamison

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Jamison, Cheryl Alters.

100 grilling recipes you cant live without / Cheryl and Bill Jamison.
pages cm
Hundred grilling recipes you cant live without
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-55832-801-3 (alk. paper)
1. Barbecuing. 2. Cookbooks. lcgft I. Jamison, Bill. II. Title. III. Title:
Hundred grilling recipes you cant live without.
TX840.B3A13 2013
641.76dc23
2012035548

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Our gratitude goes out to all you folks who share our passion for fire and flame, meat and heat, pyrotechnics and playing with foodall that is outdoor cooking. After many years, it has been a pleasure to reunite with editor Dan Rosenberg, one of publishings best. The Harvard Common Press founder Bruce Shaw gave us our early chances to write about this field; he and Adam Salomone, who handle the business side of things at HCP, urged us to return to it. Deborah Durham of Spokespersons Plus Network always has an encouraging word and a good joke, usually at Bills expense.

Weve had the pleasure of grilling on many brands and styles of equipment over several decades. We tested and fine-tuned these recipes predominantly on Ducane Meridian and Viking gas grills, a Twin Eagles Salaman salamander-style gas grill, a Solaire infrared grill, Hasty-Bake and Weber charcoal grills, a Big Green Egg, and a wood-burning outdoor fireplace. Barbara Templeman, Cheryls partner in an outdoor kitchen and dining design business, insideOUTsantafe, gently prodded us to maintain our focus on recipes appropriate for various settings, situations, and cooking styles.

Thanks to our families and many friends who have found us lacking in hospitality while we worked on this book. You might think that putting together a grill cookbook would be cause for many dinner invitations. The reality is nearly the antithesis of that. While the words and recipes come together, we are hunkered down ignoring just about everyone and everything. Now that the manuscripts turned in and out of our hands, lets get this party started.

Because thats how many grilled dinners we cook in a typical year, and we think thats about average for avid grill fans. We like to revisit old favorites on a regular basis, so we dont really need an encyclopedic repertoire. When one of our friends heard the title, she said shed be thrilled if she had ten things to grill often. If you feel the same, weve got you covered in almost every chapter.

Grilling for friends and family isor should bea relaxing and lively way to entertain, and with a good collection of dishes you can feel assured of success. You dont need matching silverware, a seating chart, or even a freshly mowed lawn. Focus on the food to make people feel regally indulged.

Many of the recipes are old favorites of ours, updated and refreshed for this book but based in some cases on dishes weve featured before in other books, magazines, newspapers, and websites. In every instance weve rethought elements of the recipe, tested new approaches, and modified ingredients and instructions accordingly.

Any good book should reflect the voice of its author(s). This one definitely manifests our tastes and perhaps prejudices. We have a particular love of foods and flavors of the Southwest, and think that the traditional practice of grilling fajitas, asadas, and taco fillings works wonderfully. We find kebobs too fiddly for many occasions and feel that the spearing of many things together on a sword is like cooking by committee. We believe that skewered food works best as an appetizer, something to eat while standing. Also, we steadfastly continue to emphasize that grilling, true grilling, is best done over an open flame without using a grill cover. We explain the reasons for that in detail in the following chapter. We dont delve deeply into using wood chunks or chips to add a hint of smoke when grilling because, with such short cooking times, it wont amount to more than a hint at best. When we want real wood resonance, we smoke food slow and low over smoldering wood, the essence of traditional barbecue, and suggest others do the same.

In deciding on our top 100 grill dishes, we each wrote down foods and preparations that we felt had to be included. As you might guess, planked salmon, the superlative ancient technique thats become easily doable at home, was near the top of both lists. It might be a little surprising to some of you, though, that plenty of other fish and seafood appeared on the list of a couple of Rocky Mountain residents. Like most of the country, we can get impeccable quality seafood locally, by putting a little effort into the shoppingand we know that you can, too. The other reason it ranks so highly for us is that, again counter to many assumptions, most seafood can be sizzled over a grill fire as well as or better than by cooking with any other method.

In addition, we grill meaty steaksrib-eyes and porterhouses and flanksand hefty chops, as well as burgers galore. We also love fire-seared eggplant, asparagus, and even pineapples and banana splits. We adore pizza on the grill, thinking it to be the closest that you can get at home to top-quality pie short of having your own pizza oven. As a side benefit, pizza on the grill will melt the reserve of your starchiest second cousin faster than the mozzarella, and bring young and old together better than a Willie Nelson concert.

Grill and kitchenware stores, catalogs, and websites are overflowing with devices to hold jalapeos upright, rearrange your ribs, and brand your burgers. We pretty much eschew anything other than a good fire, a spatula, tongs, heatproof mitts, and a small-mesh grill topper for tidbits. Our big exception to avoiding extra equipment is a rotisserie, an old-style device that yielded the expression done to a turn, keeping the juices flowing throughout the food while getting a good crisp sear on the surface. With todays models, a grill motor takes care of that turning, too, and the cook simply takes a bow at the conclusion of cooking. Thats why youll find a chapter devoted to spit-roasted poultry and meat.

For us, these are our bucket list dishes, but we dont wait around to have them once in a lifetime. We return to them frequently throughout the year and urge you to join us. So fire up your grill and lets have a hot time tonight!

The most critical success factor in grilling has nothing to do with whether you cook with charcoal or gas, marinate your food in advance, or serve your meat with a special barbecue sauce. What counts the most is an understanding and appreciation of true grill flavor. That alone can qualify someone as a master griller, regardless of their choice of fuels, the state of their grill, or their skills as a saucier. If you dont have it, you cant even be sure youre really grilling when you cook on a grill.

All methods of cooking, from simmering to frying, produce distinctive tastes and textures, generally more pronounced the better you practice the method. The goal in grilling is to intensify the natural flavor of food through the chemical process of high-heat browning (known in scientific circles as the Maillard reaction). With meat, fish, and poultry, the browning and crisping of the exterior requires direct heat at a relatively high temperature. The fire must be hot enough to shrink the muscle fibers on the surface, which concentrates the flavor, but not so hot that it burns or chars the outside before adequately cooking the inside. When you get it right, the result is a robust amplification of the foods natural flavor along with a scrumptious textural contrast between the crusted surface and the succulent interior. Its an outcome characteristic of true grilling, unlike anything obtained by other outdoor cooking methods except open-flame rotisserie roasting.