#GrillGeek: Simple vs. Easy

I don’t know if you guys know this, but I’ve been working—very occasionally—on a grilling cookbook for the past eight months or so.  I got the first maybe 10K words down and ran into something of a wall.  I realized that I needed to experiment more, that I’d gotten stuck too deeply in a rut with my grilling to write an interesting full-length story.  

I needed time and space to experiment.

Last Night's Dinner

Homemade potato chips, grilled chicken, and spinach salad.

How to Smoke a Chicken (or Turkey) on Your Grill

I've done this twice now, and both times it's come out well.  So now I'm sharing the recipe, and we'll see what you guys think.

You will need:

• A chicken or turkey, between 8 & 12 lbs.
• A kettle grill
• Lots of charcoal, preferably lump wood
• Cherry or hickory wood chips
• A disposable roasting pan
• One large carrot
• 2 sticks of celery
• Half an onion
• Several cloves of garlic
• 1.5 to 2 cups of chicken broth
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of salt
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of pepper

Sally's Secret Sauce

Sally's always telling me that she's a quarter Italian.  I personally think she comes across much more Latina than Italian, but she still decided to try making pasta sauce from scratch last night.

I made omlets yesterday

How to Grill Better

Start with real wood charcoal, lit using a chimney.

Two sheets of newspaper are enough to get this going 95% of the time.

When the charcoal is ready, pour it out slanted to one side. This creates a Three Zone Fire. Directly over the fire is Hot, the middle is Warm, and away from the coals is Cool.

Making the Three-Zone Fire is the key step.

Cool your food according to you recipe and/or appropriate instructions. These are fresh, homemade pork sausages we got at church this morning. I'm cooking them about seven minutes each side on Medium and five minutes each side on Low. Vegetables will be five each side on Medium. Always cook with the lid closes.

Brauts first.

Then let the brauts finish cooking on low while you cook the veggies on Medium.

Cook with the lid closed.

And voila!