Do Australians not know how to properly barbecue sausages?

[Johnny_L.A]

It would take me a year to eat a whole hog! I’m thinking more along a nice pork roas cooked in a Large-sized Big Green Egg.

[Huerta88]

@Johnny_L.A

It would take me a year to eat a whole hog! I’m thinking more along a nice pork roas cooked in a Large-sized Big Green Egg.

Go with the shoulder, I’d suggest. You can do something like this –

http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/568672-Mario-Batali-s-Pork-Shoulder-alla-Porchetta

or make pulled pork.

Of course, the roast pig is more a party/mass barbecue thing, but nothing wrong with that. Check out, for an even more ambitious take:

http://www.cajunspecialtymeats.com/browse.cfm/turducken/fowl-de-cochon/4,135.html

Ridiculous? Sure. Amusing? Yes. If I could ever figure out how to cook it, that would be my next theme party. There’d be no shortage of interesting conversation.

[Rick]

@glee

Ooooh - this sounds interesting.

Here in England, we light a fire in a barbecue grate, stick a grill on top and place meat (including sausages) on the grill.
When they’re done, you stick them in a bun and eat.

What is the Southern US method?

What you are describing is more appropriately known as grilling. Cooking at a fairly high direct heat.
Real barbecue is is cooking at a lower slower temp for a much longer time. Usually with lots of smoke for flavor.
for example I cook ribs for about 5 hours at 225F degrees or pork Boston butts (actually the front shoulder of the pig) for 18-24 hours at 200F. When properly cooked even the toughest cuts of meat almost fall apart, and are packed full of flavor.
The meats can be beef, pork, goat, lamb, chicken, turkey, raccoon, deer, sausages, or whatever.
Johnny LA’s links provide a good overview of regional variations of cue in the US.
What barbecue isn’t:
[ul]
[li]dumping a bottle of sauce over something and calling it barbecue[/li][li]cooked on a stove[/li][li]cooked in your kitchen oven[/li][/ul]
Clear as mud? Yeah I thought so.

[Rick]

@Johnny_L.A

It would take me a year to eat a whole hog! I’m thinking more along a nice pork roas cooked in a Large-sized Big Green Egg.

Step one: Get the egg
Step two: Get a couple of Boston Butts
Step three: season and toss on the egg at 200F with some serious smoke to start.
Step 4: leave them there until the internal temp gets to 200F (might take as long as 24 hours)
Step five: shred, add some additional spice
Step six: cue nirvana. You will understand that Ben Franklin was wrong. It isn’t beer that is proof that God loves us, it is pulled pork.

[Tully_Mars]

Here are some things I’ve learned about outdoor cooking over the years. This is tongue-in-cheek, so don’t take it too seriuosly:

1. Grilling and barbecueing are two differerent types of cooking. Grilling means direct heat. Barbecueing means indirect heat.

2. Anything can be grilled. Burgers, chicken, sausage, corn, tomatoes, squash, mushrooms, shrimp, fish - just about anything that’s not liquid. If you can cook it, grilling makes it better.

3. Barbecue takes time. If you’re not spending at least eight hours on it, you’re cheating.

4. Good barbecue doesn’t need sauce. Sauce is reserved for when you make a mistake.

5. The choice of wood matters. Charcoal is okay if you’re in a hurry and didn’t plan ahead. But, nothing beats a good, cean, dry hardwood. My favorite is pecan. Also, if you use red oak, take the bark off. The tannin in the bark gives the meat an acidic bite. That’s a mistake that required sauce.

6. Grilling is more fun when frozen margaritas are involved.

7. Not one single restaurant I’ve tried can make a steak better than one I grill in my own backyard.

[Rick]

@Tully_Mars

Here are some things I’ve learned about outdoor cooking over the years. This is tongue-in-cheek, so don’t take it too seriuosly:

2. Anything can be grilled. Burgers, chicken, sausage, corn, tomatoes, squash, mushrooms, shrimp, fish - just about anything that’s not liquid. If you can cook it, grilling makes it better.

I look forward to your recipe for grilled pinto beans.

Tongue also firmly in cheek

[pulykamell]

@Tully_Mars

1. Grilling and barbecueing are two differerent types of cooking. Grilling means direct heat. Barbecueing means indirect heat.

I’m not sure I would agree. Traditional open pit barbecue, for instance, is cooked directly over coals–there just needs to be ample space between the coals and cooking grate to keep the temps in low and slow range. I’ve actually started moving away from indirect barbecue to direct barbecue, because I like the fat-in-the-fire flavor it produces. I find the flavor superior to indirect barbecue, but that’s a personal preference.

[Hunter_Hawk]

@Rick

I look forward to your recipe for grilled pinto beans.

FWIW, there’s a local chef who makes a vegetarian version of cassoulet. Since there’s no duck or sausage in it, she adds flavor by smoking the beans themselves.
Regarding shrimp, I know a guy who wraps bacon around shrimp and small slices of jalapeno, then grills them. It comes out quite good, but you have to watch for grease flares. (He douses the flares by drizzling beer on the shrimp/bacon skewers.)

[Johnny_L.A]

@Hunter_Hawk

Regarding shrimp, I know a guy who wraps bacon around shrimp and small slices of jalapeno, then grills them.

I was at Shayna’s and Spiny Norman’s house a couple of years ago, and Shayna’s sister made shrimps stuffed with Havarti and wrapped in bacon that Spiny Norman grilled on the gas barbie. Really good.

What I want to know is how to perfectly cook a lobster over charcoal. Split lengthwise? Just the tails? What seasoning? If split, stuff the thorax? With what?

[lissener]

A sausage–any sausage from frankfurter to bratwurst–isn’t edible unless it’s at least half black, brittle carbon. Need that gritty crunch.

[Johnny_L.A]

Agreed.

[glee]

@Rick

What you are describing is more appropriately known as grilling. Cooking at a fairly high direct heat.
Real barbecue is is cooking at a lower slower temp for a much longer time. Usually with lots of smoke for flavor.
for example I cook ribs for about 5 hours at 225F degrees or pork Boston butts (actually the front shoulder of the pig) for 18-24 hours at 200F. When properly cooked even the toughest cuts of meat almost fall apart, and are packed full of flavor.

Once again, two nations divided by a common language! :eek:

Real barbecue is what you call grilling.
What you call barbecue, we call slow cooking.

[Bobotheoptimist]

@glee

Once again, two nations divided by a common language! :eek:

Real barbecue is what you call grilling.
What you call barbecue, we call slow cooking.

We’ve one nation divided by a common language. “Southerners” are bitchy about this word, but much (or “some”) of the rest of the US doesn’t really care all that much. I call cooking outside over a bed of glowing coals (or a big ol’ fire, if I’m really hungry) “barbeque”, just like roasting some ribs in the oven and drowning them in Kraft BBQ sauce is barbeque. I’m sure if I lived in teh South I’d be drawn and quartered (and slow smoked over hickory). But I don’t.

[Huerta88]

@glee

What you call barbecue, we call slow cooking.

Which in America, means stewing in a crock pot.

[GorillaMan]

@Rick

What you are describing is more appropriately known as grilling. Cooking at a fairly high direct heat.
Real barbecue is is cooking at a lower slower temp for a much longer time. Usually with lots of smoke for flavor

From various descriptions, it sems to me that the ‘real barbecue’ you describe isn’t far off very traditional British produce coming from hot smoking methods. The difference is that we make it in a building, whereas you dig a hole in the ground (In seriousness, the methods probably diverged from a common ancestor a few hundred years ago.)

[Huerta88]

@GorillaMan

(In seriousness, the methods probably diverged from a common ancestor a few hundred years ago.)

Not necessarily or totally:

Wiki says:

The origins of both the activity of barbecue cooking and the word itself are somewhat obscure. Most etymologists believe that barbecue derives ultimately from the word barbacoa found in the language of the Taíno people of the Caribbean. The word translates as “sacred fire pit” and is also spelled barbacoa.[2] The word describes a grill for cooking meat, consisting of a wooden platform resting on sticks.

Traditional barbacoa involves digging a hole in the ground and placing some meat (usually a whole goat) with a pot underneath it, so that the juices can make a hearty broth. It is then covered with maguey leaves and coal and set alight. The cooking process takes a few hours.

There is ample evidence that both the word and cooking technique migrated out of the Caribbean and into other languages and cultures, with the word moving from Caribbean dialects into Spanish, then French and English. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first recorded use of the word in the English language in 1697 by the British buccaneer William Dampier. [3]

[terrymiff]

@don_t_ask

Ah if only. Unfortunately all the Aussie Dopers are Aussie, so nothing ever happens.

I’m having a barbie tonight. Come on over. It won’t take you long to drive to Adelaide. It’s only about 1,400 km.

Don’t bother bringing any of your garbage NSW beer, we drink the real stuff…Cooper’s Pale Ale.

[don_t_ask]

@terrymiff

Don’t bother bringing any of your garbage NSW beer, we drink the real stuff…Cooper’s Pale Ale.

And the sun rises in the East. Oh, I may be a bit late, I haven’t quite left.

[silenus]

@Rick

I look forward to your recipe for grilled pinto beans.

Tongue also firmly in cheek

Well to tell the truth, I have done beans on the smoker before. Brisket on the off side, beans in a pot over the wood. Got a good, smokey flavor, they did. Especially after I chunked a bit of the brisket and stirred that into the beans. When you use as big a smoker as I do, you can multi-task a bit.

[pulykamell]

@silenus

Well to tell the truth, I have done beans on the smoker before. Brisket on the off side, beans in a pot over the wood. Got a good, smokey flavor, they did. Especially after I chunked a bit of the brisket and stirred that into the beans. When you use as big a smoker as I do, you can multi-task a bit.

Or you could put a big pan of beans under the brisket (on a lower rack), and catch all the drippings. Yum!