Tell us What To Grill via Facebook or Twitter and enter a chance to win a free new iPod Touch, a free Grill It app from Grilling Companion and a great grilling gear package from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Giveaway starts on Friday September 3 at 5:00 PM EST, and ends on Monday September 19 at 11:59 PM EST. We will select our favorite suggestion out of the entries that follow the simple guidelines described below. Remember to try I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Original Spray as an easy way to add flavor without adding calories, fat or trans fat.  Good luck!

To Enter:

Choose one entry method from below (Twitter or Facebook).

Twitter

1. Follow GrillCompanion
2. Retweet this message: Win a new iPod Touch by tweeting to @GrillCompanion about what to grill! http://bit.ly/bOzdDo #giveaway #contest
3. Write a tweet suggesting something to grill. Be sure to include @GrillCompanion in your tweet so we can track it

- Or -

Facebook

1. “Like” our GrillingCompanion Facebook Page
2. Share this message (click “share” on this message on our Page or paste the following text into a status update): Win a new iPod Touch by suggesting something to grill on GrillingCompanion’s facebook page! http://bit.ly/bOzdDo
3. Post a recipe suggestion on our Facebook wall at http://www.facebook.com/grillingcompanion.

The Goods!

The winner will receive the following package:

• A new iPod Touch
• Grill It! app for the iPod Touch

And from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, the following grilling package will be given to the winner:

I shouldn’t have done this with 2 months left to go until football season, but I finally got around to taking apart my new Freedom Grill and completed the custom paint job.  All I need is my blank emblem in the mail and find a USF sticker to fit!  I think I will tailgate in the driveway this weekend for a few baseball games….

The titles for all of our recipes now wrap and are no longer cut off (oops!).

We added a Latest button to allow you to view all of the latest recipes (updated for FREE every time you launch the app). Weber doesn’t do that!

Once the latest recipes are viewed for the first time, they are automatically removed from the latest list and you can find them in their appropriate category.

Already purchased the app? Thank you. We’d love your help.  Even if you already reviewed a previous version of the app (thanks again!), you can review each updated version.  If you like the app, please take a moment to rate the app in the app store.  Just go to the Grill-It! app using this link.  ITunes will launch and you can scroll down to “rate this application”.  It only takes a few moments and we would really appreciate the help!

Got feedback or suggestions for features?  We’d love to hear about them too.  Send them to grillit@grillingcompanion.com.

http://www.meyoubbq.com/ – VIP trip to Nashville for you and three friends to attend a private backyard BBQ with Keith Urban

https://www.usscpromotions.com/cookinglight/dine_al_fresco/ – win a backyard BBQ party for 10 hosted by Chef Billy and al fresco^® All Natural, right in the comfort of your own home

http://www.bransonsilverdollarcity.com/contests/default.aspx?ContestID=59 – Take your backyard to the next level with a makeover worth over $14,000

http://www.sheknows.com/giveaway/ultimate-family-bbq-giveaway/ – win a family BBQ prize pack complete with a gas grill, all the grill tools you need to make a mean cut of meat, $100 worth of family games, a slate cheese board, wine decanter, wine glasses and serving tray.

And my favorite:

http://www.reynoldswrapgrilling.com/bbq.asp – Enter For Your Chance To Attend Barbecue University® With Steven Raichlen!

Sign up and let us know if you win!

Bacon.  Ah, my good friend bacon.  Not sure how we could live without you. The only thing better than good bacon, is good crispy bacon.

It isn’t easy to get good crispy bacon.  Many people that don’t know any better cook the bacon at a high temperature and get burned but chewy bacon.  In this post I’ll give you a quick run down on what I’ve found works.  And yes, since this is a grilling site, we’ll do it on the grill.

My favorite pan to use is a cast iron skillet.  At these prices, there is really no reason not to have a pre-seasoned cast iron skillet in your arsenal.

Starting with a cold pan, add 3 slices of bacon and put over a medium heat. You want to cook as much of the fat off the bacon without it burning. This means you may have to move the pan around a bit if it gets too hot and the bacon starts to burn or gets too cool and the bacon stops sizzling.  Either on a gas grill or a charcoal grill, you will want to make sure you have zones set up so that you can regulate the temperature and move to a cool zone if you need to. If you start to see any black on the raised rounded bumps of bacon or the edges, your pan is too hot and you should move it to a cool zone.

While cooking, continuously turn over the bacon so that it cooks evenly on both sides. Changing positions in the pan helps in case the are hotter areas in the pan.  As the bacon cooks it will render the fat into the pan.  If it gets to the point where the bacon is swimming in the grease, you should carefully drain it. This is very HOT stuff and is VERY flammable so do this very carefully. Never drain into water or your sink.  I usually drain into a large dry empty metal can or another pot and then let the grease cool completely before putting it into the garbage.

Depending on bacon thickness the bacon should be done in about 10-15 minutes. Look for the deep brown color. Move to paper towels in order to drain any remaining fat.

Enjoy!

Update: Recently read on Twitter that if you soak the bacon for a few minutes in cold water before frying, it will be even crispier.  Next time I fry bacon, I’ll give it a try and let you know how it turns out.

What’s not to love about a cut of meat with the word “tender” in it’s name? Beef tenderloin is right up there with my choices if I ever need to pick a last meal. If you have a special occasion coming up and want to impress your guest, this is the cut of meat you should splurge for at the butcher’s shop. Some cuts of meat require work to get great taste and optimal tenderness. With the beef tenderloin, all the cook needs to do is not screw it up.

The beef tenderloin is the cut of meat that provides us with the filet mignon. Just like the filet mignon, we want to keep the seasoning minimal and focus more on technique. Aside from over-seasoning, the easiest way to screw up a great beef tenderloin is to over-cook it! If there was ever a justification to purchase a good probe meat thermometer, this is it. You just paid a lot of money for this thing, what’s another $40 for a good probe thermometer that will allow you to monitor the progress?

Before we get into actually cooking this hunk of meat, we need to talk about trimming and preparing the tenderloin. If you can, I would suggest getting your butcher to trim the meat for you. You may pay more for it, but it will save you about 20 minutes of trimming time and also save you the trauma of removing so much waste from this expensive cut of meat. On the 6.5 lb. tenderloin I just prepared, I would estimate that I removed a pound of fat. That’s a lot of waste and it hurts to throw that stuff away after spending so much on the tenderloin. Entire articles have been written and some videos published on how to trim and prepare a tenderloin, so you can Google if you need more information. You are going to want to remove all of the fat and membrane (most will come off by pulling with your hands), the rubbery silver skin and the “chain”, which is a fatty piece of meat that runs down one side of the tenderloin. Once trimmed, fold a few inches of the thin end of the tenderloin over onto itself and secure with butcher’s twine.

Tie some twine around the tenderloin at about 2 inch intervals to hold the shape. Once the meat is trimmed and tied, you’re ready to get started cooking!

How to Grill a Beef Tenderloin

1. Allow the tenderloin to come to room temperature on the kitchen counter. This step is really important, so don’t skip it. If you don’t let the tenderloin (or any large cut of meat) come to room temperature, it won’t cook evenly.
2. While your tenderloin is warming up, go ahead and light the grill. We are going to cook this indirectly, so pile up the coals on one of your charcoal grill or light half of the burners on your gas grill.
3. For seasoning, less is definitely more here. I like to season mine with some fresh ground black pepper and just a little garlic powder. No salt is needed and might actually pull some of the moisture out. Rub the black pepper all over.
4. Now that the beef tenderloin has warmed to room temperature and your grill is hot, place the tenderloin over the hot part of the grill to sear. We want to sear (not burn!) all sides of the tenderloin to create a nice crust.
5. Once all sides are seared, insert your probe thermometer into the thickest part of the tenderloin and then move it over to the cool side of the grill.
6. Close the lid and leave it alone!
7. Maintain a grill temperature (on the cool side) of around 325 – 350. A 6 pound beef tenderloin should take a little over an hour to reach our magic temperature of 130 degrees. Don’t go by time though, cook to temperature.
8. Once the tenderloin hits 130 degrees, remove from the grill and place on a platter.
9. Allow the tenderloin to rest under aluminum foil for 15 minutes before carving. Serious, let it sit! If you don’t, all of those delicious juices will run out of the meat.
10. Remove the twine.
11. Carve either thick filets, or for maximum tenderness, thin slices and serve!

That’s all there is to this great piece of meat. The hardest part is the prep and I would recommend you get the meat guys to do the work for you there. Grilling technique is the key here and with a good probe meat thermometer, there’s nothing to it. I LOVE the Maverick RediChek remote meat thermometer. It has two probes that allow me to monitor both the meat and the grill temperature. I’d highly recommend it (and will in an article soon).

I don’t know why, but I’ve had a love affair with lamb (cooked lamb only) for years. If it is on the menu, I’m ordering it. If there is a reason to cook it, I’m on it. Even if there isn’t a reason to cook lamb, I’m on it. So when I was perusing the meat case at my local super market and saw some loin lamb chops staring back at me, how could I say no?

Lamb chops may be a fancy food to eat, but they are very simple to cook, especially on the grill.  Loin chops are the most tender and leanest of the variety of available lamb chops.  Of course that makes them the most expensive too, but worth the extra outlay of hard earned cash.  They can be easily identified by the T-bone.

Ingredients:
Lamb chops – about 1 inch thick
Dried rosemary 1/2 teaspoon per chop
Olive oil 1/2 tablespoon per chop
Salt – pinch per chop or to taste
Pepper – pinch per chop

Directions:
Step 1 – Trim the fat. Since we are grilling these lamb chops, it is best to trim the excess fat from the edges of the chop to reduce the flareups.  This fat won’t add flavor in the cooking process (it’s the marbled fat throughout the meat that adds flavor), and will only lead to oily flare ups.

Step 2 – Clean and season. Rinse and pat dry the chops.  Brush both sides of the chops with the olive oil. Sprinkle with the dried rosemary, salt and pepper.  So far, pretty easy!  Leave the meat out of the refrigerator to come up to room temperature for about 1/2 hour.

Step 3 – Grill prep. Next prepare your grill.  We’ll be cooking with an open lid on direct high heat.  If using a gas let the grill heat up with the lid closed for 10 to 15 minutes before grilling.  This will allow the grates to get hot which will make nice grill marks and add to the radiant heat.  If you are using charcoal, start your coals in a chimney and then spread out the coals to create the three zones: no coals; 1 layer of coals; and 2 layers of coals.

Once the grill is ready and the chops have been out of the fridge for 1/2 hour,  carefully oil the grates with a paper towel dabbed in vegetable oil (peanut works great).

Step 4 – Grill the chops. Add the lamb chops to the grill and grill over high heat with the lid open.  If you get any flareups, move the chop to a cooler part of the grill until the flames die down.  After about 4 minutes, turn the chops over and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes.  As always, this varies based on the temperature outside, the temp and thickness of the meat, and the grill temp.  If you use a instant read thermometer, 155° F is medium.

Step 5 – Let it rest. Remove the meat from the grill, cover and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Step 6 – Eat and enjoy! In this case I served it with roasted garlic and smoked tomato couscous and grilled asparagus. Don’t forget the mint sauce.

If you like this, you should try the leg of lamb.

Shit-Talking & Sausage Making: Just Another Day at The Meat Hook from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Ah, the delicious flank steak. This cut of steak comes from one of the toughest muscles on the cow, but it has some of the best flavor on the animal. Flank steaks are also great candidates for a long bath in a delicious marinade. Marinade them in some lime, garlic, cilantro and jalapeno and I bet most of those slices won’t even make it to your grilled fajita bar!

Sorry, I got a little excited there, back to the point. We all have probably heard, or read on our grilling recipes, that tough muscles like flank steak should be sliced thinly against the grain. Most people probably give up on these tough cuts after eating slices that weren’t properly cut against the grain. The concept of slicing against the grain is to shorten the actual muscle fibers so that they are easier to chew. If you slice with the grain, those muscle fibers are really long and tough to chew. Think of a rubber band. If you (for some odd reason) wanted to consume a rubber band, would it be easier to chew up long strands or short? One might argue that you wouldn’t be able to chew even the short bands, but one might also admit you wouldn’t choke as easily as on the longer bands. Nonetheless, you get the point!

Still not following me? Well, luckily the Food Lab over at Serious Eats conducted a much more in-depth experiment into slicing meats against the grain. The article is filled with enough photos to make it easy to illustrate the technique, along with enough math and science to please us geeks.

Head on over to the article to learn how to slice that tough, but delicious, cut of meat. Then come on back over here for some delicious grilling this weekend using our cilantro lime flank steak recipe!

Hot Dog lobbyist? I didn’t know there was such a thing and now I think that’s the best use of a Law degree that I have ever heard. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council is a Washington-based firm that lobbies on behalf of the wiener industry. You may not have thought anything of them, but they are hard at work protecting our beloved cased meat from those that would like to rid us of this tailgating staple.

How busy is this firm? Busier than you might imagine. Just this month, they were at war for wieners over two potentially damaging cases. In the first case, a Kansas City Royals fan has started a lawsuit claiming that he suffered an eye injury at a game from an errant hot dog toss from the Royal’s mascot. Can you say frivolous? Everyone knows you have to keep your head on a swivel when there’s a guy in a giant foam costume slinging hot dogs! INCOMING!

Elsewhere in the war on hot dogs, the American Academy of Pediatrics described hot dogs as a “high risk” food for children. Yeah, they raised hot dogs to terror level orange. According to the Academy, 17% of all asphyxiation deaths of children under 10 occur while eating hot dogs. I’m not saying there isn’t a danger of choking on the things, but is it higher than anything else you put into your mouth? Case in point, the other 83% of high risk foods include some subset of nuts, grapes, candy, carrots and other veggies. You know, anything that isn’t liquid. The Wiener council also released numbers on the “hot dog season”, which includes the period between Memorial and Labor Days. According to their numbers, about 818 hot dogs were consumed every second of the Summer. If choking on hot dogs alone was a huge risk, I think we would have seen a lot more in the news with that many consumed. The parking lots of most college and professional games would need a triage center just for hot dog consumers.

So fight the good fight National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. I did not know you existed, but I am glad you do. Maybe the Royals should have a “protect your grill” night, complete with a face mask that looks like the grate of a grill. You know, so no one looses an eye.

My goal this year is to experiment a lot more with flavors I haven’t really used in recipes.  I feel like I am kind of in a rut and tend to stick with the flavors I am most comfortable with.  We’ll see if my little experiment results in a coup attempt in my family at dinner time.  More on that later…

One of the best areas to experiment is with spices.  A simple grilled boneless chicken breast can be made into something awesome with the right combination of spices that you should have in your cupboard at all times.  Last night I made a quick Southwestern rub for chicken with chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  Simple, delicious!

The key to successfully experiment with such spices is knowing what each spice brings to the mix.  To that end, the Kitchn wrote up this awesome quick guide to the most common spices.  There is no substitute for sticking your finger in there and TASTING the spices, but this is a good start.  Funny, I just followed a recipe the other day for yellow rice.  I hadn’t really used Tumeric before and once I was done with the recipe, couldn’t really taste it in the dish.  According to this guide, it’s used more for the color than flavor…makes sense.

Check out the great spice quick guide from theKitchn.com.

Via Wired.

Update, here’s a little video clip of the little sausage finger in action:

I got a voice mail from my Buddy Kenny the other day saying he found a deal for me at Tuesday Morning. “Hmm”, I thought, “didn’t know I was in the market for a new silk flower arrangement”. I was intrigued more to find out what Kenny was doing in that store than the actual deal, so I called him back. I never really understood the idea of a “closeout store”, it always reminded me of that guy that stops you in the parking lot with those “extra speakers we had on a job”. Turns out that this closeout store had a $400 tailgating grill for $250 and they had only one left. Grill? Tailgating? Deal? I wasn’t about to let someone snag that kind of deal…

Turns out this tailgating grill was a Freedom Margaritaville Grill. I have admired these things at various events for a long time, but couldn’t get permission to purchase. The Freedom grills lock into your vehicle’s hitch and swing out of the way so that you can cook on it without even removing it from the vehicle. This time I decided to ask for forgiveness, rather than permission from my lovely wife. I body-checked a few closeout shoppers that looked a little too interested in this grill, loaded it into my vehicle and headed home.

Assembly on this thing was a breeze. I had it all put together in about 20 minutes. Tailgate grill installed on the car and no place to go? No sweat, let’s try this bad-boy out on a Saturday afternoon. By the way, the Margaritaville grill has another great advantage. The box it comes in is the perfect size to make a play house for a 1 year old (and his 5 year old brother). How do I know? I had the kids that afternoon, how else was I to keep them occupied to try out my new grill?

I didn’t have a small propane tank to use, but luckily the grill comes with a hose to attached a regular, full-size tank. One quick push of the igniter and she was lit. After about 20 minutes (enough time to cut a new window and higher roof on the box playhouse) I threw on some wings to see how she cooked.

What’s the verdict for this first cooking session on the Freedom grill? Overall, I think it’s going to be a great grill for the games next year. It didn’t seem to get hot enough to properly sear a steak and the cooking was a little uneven for my tastes, but who cares. The convenience and looks of this thing far out-weighs the performance. Next step is a custom paint job…more on that soon!

Head on over to Jaden’s great TLC blog and check out the results…

Chef Paul’s Sweet and Smokey Ribs

Tune in tonight to see if Myron goes after a judge with a peach log…

“Ain’t no use in cookin’ if you ain’t gonna cook with fresh food…cause you can taste the difference, if you know anything about food.”

“You gotta put somethin in it so you can get that good taste and stuff out of it…you can’t just jump up and say ‘I can cook’…it’s provin’ it!”

Mr. Okra knows a thing or two about fresh fruits and vegetables.  Who’s Mr. Okra?  Think about your neighborhood ice cream man, complete with the loud horn, but this guy is selling fruit and vegetables.   I think Mr. Okra has it all figured out “I love my truck….and I love what I do”, I’m seriously jealous.  It would be worth a trip to New Orleans just to buy something from this man and sit down for a chat.

“Be nice or leave” is written on his truck, like I said, he’s got it all figured out.

It’s times like these where my oldest son is jealous of his friends that have fireplaces.  When the weather dips to an icy 60 degrees, it’s time to over-pay for a shrink-wrapped bundle of wood at the grocery store and light a fire, even if you have to turn on the AC.  After all, what’s the use in having a fireplace if you can’t roast some marshmallows once a year?  To tell the truth, I am a little jealous too this week.  I’m a sucker for off the wall cooking and grilling techniques and I love how this one brings us back to the days of the Pioneers.  If I had a fireplace, you can bet that I would be trying to roast our dinner over a nice hot fire.

If you have a fireplace, check out WikiHow’s article for ideas on how to cook with your indoor open flame.  I can see the  “human rotisserie” method getting old after the first 5 minutes, but they had me with the string turning method.  It would be worth cooking a chicken this way just to see my wife’s face when she came home.  Here’s a detailed video from firepit-and-grilling-guru.com:

Give it a shot next time you are snowed in.

Also on this episode, struggling rookie Paul asks veteran Trigg for advice.  Given Trigg’s grumpy nature, that ought to be interesting…