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S & I have had some grilling adventures thus far in the summer. Above you can see an early experiment with our new grill with awesome cast iron grates (he gives some more specs on it below), with Ludo's spiedie marinated pork chops and zucchini halves with olive oil and sea salt. Check out the grill marks!
Here's a guest post from S on his rib smoking experiment:
Some purists believe that the only way to smoke ribs is on a charcoal smoker, and laugh or sneer at those of us who attempt barbecue on a gas grill. But we imagined that, as long as you get the basics right -- slow and low, with moisture and smoldering wood -- you should be able to get a good smoke regardless of the hardware. We were right.
We got a 3.4 lb rack of center cut spare ribs and rubbed it with a dry rub called "Aloha rub" that I brought home when I was in Hawaii last year. You don't have to let a dry rub sit on ribs for too long; we left it in the fridge for about 20 minutes while prepping the grill.
For barbecue, you want indirect heat. In a charcoal smoker, you'd put the meat on one side, and all the coals on the other. In a gas grill, ideally you'd be able to turn on the burners on one side only. We have the Weber Q 300, which has two burners, a large rectangular burner around the perimeter of the grill and a smaller burner that runs across the middle (see diagram). This means that there's no hotter/cooler sides, only more/less heat overall. We started with the large burner on its lowest possible setting, but this gave a consistent 300F. Way too hot. Switching to the smaller burner gave a remarkably consistent 240F, after a little futzing with the dial. Perfect.
But that burner provides direct heat, and barbecue requires indirect. This can be accomplished with a double-layer of aluminum foil on top of the grill grate. On top of this went a wire rack (which provided about 1/2" of elevation), and on top of that went the rack of ribs.
Besides low, indirect heat, the other "ingredients" of barbecue are moisture and smoke. We forgot to take pictures of them at the time, but you'll see in the diagram where a small pan sat -- just an extra foil drip pan from the grill -- full of beer right on top of the grates (green), and a smoke bomb with applewood (purple) beneath them. The liquid acts as a heat sink and provides some moisture, and the smoldering of the wood provides the smoke, of course.
The final ingredient is time. These ribs smoked for 3.5 hours. 30 minutes before removing them, we painted the meaty side with a thick barbecue sauce. You don't want to do this too early, or else the sugars in the sauce could burn, and that would be unpleasant. 30 minutes is enough time for the sauce to heat up and get a little sticky.
Is it possible to tell from the pictures how good the results were? The picture of the two cut ribs shows that it's indeed possible to get a pretty nice pink smoke ring even on a gas grill. And, I might add, even if you're a city boy from the North.
One last grilling adventure on this monster long post... this is a gorgeous picture of grilled corvina, also known as white sea bass. It is frequently used as a ceviche fish but a fish guy at Wegman's suggested that we grill it. It's a mild fish but has substantial texture. Here it is prepared simply, with olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon, accompanied by similarly dressed grilled asparagus spears.
Fish is a difficult food item to manage for me. I don't like anything too "fishy," and unfortunately living inland in Ithaca means that most things are going to be "fishy" because they aren't fresh enough. I did enjoy this corvina quite a bit but forgot to consult the sustainable fish guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium about it... they list it as one to avoid. Sigh. Eating fish is a perfect illustration of the contradictions that face modern eaters who try to be conscientious... while fish is healthy and can be delicious, the polluted state of the oceans raise questions about toxicity. Overfishing is a huge problem, but fish farming is not necessarily the answer, because there are also questions about the toxicity of those fish as well (sometimes, as in the case of salmon, even more potentially toxic). Not to mention prices... should we really just try to buy our way to safety?
Putting these huge questions aside for a bit, the question I'm going to take up on this blog, which celebrates eating, is, what fish should I be buying and eating? I can't answer that now, but I will try to keep Mark Bittman's rules in mind (check out his awesome, thoughtful piece in the NYTimes about eating fish). Given how the Maine lobster industry has recovered, I can definitely celebrate eating lobsters!!! We'll have to try a lobster grilling experiment sometime in the future.
