I just read this recipe to the wife. Guess what we’re cooking tomorrow night?
The marinade for wokked vegetables is über-simple: Chunk veggies and marinate in olive oil & canola oil mixed with Harry & David’s Vegetable Rub and some garlic. The olive oil is for flavor. The canola oil is to raise the smoke point so the veggies don’t get bitter before they’re done. Watch for flare-ups from the dripping oil. Quite spectacular, but I find they add some nice char to the peppers.
There are several different designs of woks available. Pick whichever one best fits your grill. Ours is square.
One thing we enjoy is sticking hunks of steak, onion, and green pepper on a skewer, marinating them for a few hours in teriyaki sauce, then grilling them while basting with teriyaki glaze. If I’m feeling a little wacky, I add tomatoes on the skewers too. Cook the steak to med. rare, btw.
Here’s another one that my family loves too. Buy a flanksteak. Unfold it and put it in a dish. Buy a bottle of Wishbone (has to be Wishbone) French Dressing. Pour half the dressing over the steak. Turn the steak over and pour the other half of the dressing over it. Cover it with saran wrap and stick it in the fridge for 24 hours or overnight. Grill it to rare, slice very thin against the grain. I always reheat the leftover dressing as “gravy”. Yes, I make sure to boil it real good to kill any bacteria or anything. Good stuff, man.
Why the foil? I make this a lot, and have never used the foil.
I’ll also suggest beer can chicken, but with tea in the can and indian spices + some brown sugar rubbed onto the meat. You can make a rub with any spices you like, but always add more sugar than salt. Dr. Pepper and lemonade also make good beer can chicken.
eta: If you have a grill frying pan (like a regular frying pan with holes in it), here’s a great recipe: Toss asparagus, snow peas, or green beans in soy sauce with a little powdered ginger and BBQ until they’re done the way you like them.
I kick my own ass every time I see the little packs in the grocery store for $8-$10. I’ve got a small pile of red cedar that is too crooked and too insect-damaged to saw into usable lumber. I could surely saw it into grilling planks, if I had the time. At those prices, I could net about $1k for what is otherwise trash. It would cost more than you’re paying for me to ship them to you, though, if I were to saw them.
To the OP - propane? You speak heresy, ye heathen.
I know, I know. Trust me, I wanted a charcoal grill. A nice round black Webber like my father and his father before him, but my girlfriend does not want me starting fires on the second floor balcony and considers charcoal grills to be nothing more than giant metal cans of dirt anyway. I’m going to buy a small tailgating style Weber to keep in the garage, but for the time being I’m all Hank Hill up in my grilling.
I’ve used the same Weber Kettle for 20 years, but propane is so much easier and cleaner. The kettle has been retired. Long Live Propane!
I still use wood in the smoker, of course. I’m not a fanatic.
Take a salmon filet and slice it into ~2" wide strips (across the short axis). Marinate in pesto sauce (I like Classico). Take sprigs of rosemary (~8" long) and pull off all the leaves. Using the springs as skewers, thread the salmon on to the rosemary. Throw on grill and prepare to die happy.
Smokey Joe’s are $30 at Walmart. In fact, my husband used ours on Mother’s Day to cook three small filets in the garage - it was way too windy on the deck - worked out great.
You can have your smokey flavor and I’ll have the ability to use my grill at a whim as easily as I can turn on my stove (plus the ability to add smokey flavor if I feel a real need for it).
In fact I’ve got steaks for it tonight and I last used my grill two nights ago. I would be hard pressed to use it once a week with charcoal…
My best suggestion is to take notes every time you grill. This allows you to duplicate the conditions as closely as possible each time you grill an item.
Grilling is much more inexact than roasting in an oven, but the results don’t have to be.
Go purchase How to Grill by Steven Raichlen. It really should be included with every grill sold.
One of my favorites is his soy-ginger London broil. You whir up some ginger, soy sauce, garlic, red wine, red onion, salt and pepper in the food processor and marinate a London broil in it overnight. Drain it and grill it on high for about 8 minutes on each side. Let it rest and slice it against the grain. I’m having a party tomorrow night and I’m serving this on mini-buns with some shredded onion; I’m calling it the Swarovski Krystal.
My last grilling experience, I did whole Mackerel in a foil packet ala Veracruzana. I used a bit of dollar store salsa verde (green tomatillo spicy salsa), Chipotle con adobo, some sliced, purple, kalamata olives and fresh lemon with some OO in a packet. I over did the chipotle and it was too spicy, and it is not very appealing too look at because of the black olives, but it tasted good and was flaky and delicious. I think I would balance it better on a second attempt, and perhaps finish with some fresh cilantro.
I’m really going to have to try some of these out. But maybe you grill-meisters can give me some help on general grill maintenance. How the hell do you keep the things clean? Should I easy off after every session? It’s not that hard to keep the top grill clean, but stuff drips down onto the burners, and gunks them all up. Do I dis-assemble the grill to clean those after every use? Or is there some trick that I just don’t know about?
Clean? Huh? That’s what you do at the end of the season. My grill gets brushed clean before every session, but I wait to clean the burners and such until winter. But it sounds like you’re getting gunk into them more often. In that case, brush them clean while they are still warm from the session. That way you don’t have to spray chemicals around your grill so often.
Regular cleaning: I crank the heat to max when I’m finished grilling, after the meat has been removed and is resting. I keep the lid down and let it get nice and hot. Then, I scrape the grill with a wire brush to remove the gunk, which is more or less ash by that point. Ta da! It’s ready for the next grilling session.
Major cleaning: pressure washer. Remove the grills and blast 'em clean, let 'em dry in the hot sun. Same with the grill’s interior. Works for me.
Clean? But that’s where the flavor comes from on a gas grill.
I’ve already destroyed my grill this year between those greaseball premade frozen burgers and really drippy sauces, but I just let the burners run for another few minutes on high after I’m done, and then scrape and brush before I put the cover back on. The rest of that stuff that falls down is in no-mans-land until it snows and I finally take the grill apart and give it a good cleaning.
