Disclaimer: Stop reading now if you are a pescatarian, vegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian, raw vegan, or macrobiotic. Yes, for those of you who don't know, those are real words with real people who try to live by a certain diet. Don't judge others and maybe you won't be judged. Carnivores untie!
Summer time! What better way to spend a summer evening, than grilling outside while the heat of the day begins to fade and soft night gets his invitation.
Not really. It's just a faster way to cook meat and it doesn't heat up your kitchen like a short-order diner, and you have to morph into Flo from the old eighties show, Alice, and tell your family to "Kiss my grits!”
Grilling meat outside is just one of the many beautiful and convenient ways to use your grill. There are tons of recipes in cookbooks and on the internet for grilling anything from vegetables to oysters. No lie. It's easier to start out simple, which meat really is, and work your way up, or the grill will become another version of a kitchen disaster.
Because there are so many types of grills, I'm going to give you a specific idea and then you will adjust it for your type of grill. Let's face it. I'm not Bobby Flay and neither are you. Together we can achieve maximum satisfaction without the flare and pomp. We aren't pleasing millions of people and our sponsors, only ourselves and the ones we feed.
Generally speaking there are four types of grills. We have a gas grill and I prefer it because my kitchen is also gas. It's also infrared, which means it heats very quickly and cooks faster than any other method of grilling. Pretty impressive when you think about cooking time saved, fuel cost, and the hunger pains of waiting from the mouth-watering aroma of your favorite piece of meat sizzling under delicate laps of flames. Infrared also prevents those ugly and sometimes scary flare-ups from a regular grill that can remove eyebrows and arm hair by simply raising the lid. Not pretty on anyone.
A second type of grill is the old school charcoal grills, the ones you have to buy briquettes, squirt some light fluid on, set it on bonfire mode like in your old high school days, and wait for about an hour before being able to use it. I'm not being snarky, just letting you know that this method is going to require time, energy and more dedication and skill. If you want to take the time to get good at this type of grilling, you should. Cooking is all about doing what you like. Just don't expect your first meal, or second, or even tenth to come out satisfactory. Charcoal grilling takes a knack, but you can definitely get it. I have no patience to learn the technique. For those of you who enjoy the smoky, grilled flavor, fire away!! Start with cheaper cuts of meat until you feel you have enough experience under your belt.
A third type is propane. The convenience of this is it makes the grill portable for tailgating or moving to a more weather friendly environment. I always think wind in the Texas Panhandle, but it makes practical sense in the rainy and snowy months, too. This is the type of grill you want if you don't plan on grilling for a huge crowd, or unless you want to be grilling for hours upon hours. Your choice.
The last type of grill is the electric grill, like a George Foreman. It's perfect for those who don't have the room for a big honkin' scrap of metal to grill a side of beef in. You will be able to get the grill marks minus the flavor, but a grill is a grill and it beats the tar out of turning on an oven in the middle of summer!
Whichever grill best meets your need, or maybe just the one you are currently stuck with, make the most of it. Research and become knowledgeable of how the grill works. Then you will be able to take any recipe, including mine for barbecued pork steaks, and apply it accordingly. The recipe isn't the trick, because any recipe will do, the technique is the magic.
First, like in most recipes, you will want to heat your oven. In this case it's the grill. I fire my gas grill up on high, and in about 7 minutes I have 500°. You get your grill going according to the type it is.
These 7 minutes of heating gives me ample opportunity to get my meat, pork steaks in this case, ready and maybe even time to get a few side dishes started.
Most meats cook more evenly, whether you're frying or grilling, when it is room temperature. But don't think for a minute I won't throw on a chicken quarter or T-bone that's still partially stiff with frozen particles. Sometimes nature has to be man-handled. Or pan-handled. Ha!
Even though I plan on putting barbecue sauce on these little devils later, I still want a little flavoring while initially grilling the meat.
Here is a tip you are going to appreciate. Have you ever watched a cooking show or maybe a relative sprinkle steak and chicken and pork chops with some divinely smelling seasoning, and then return the meat to the fridge, to let the spices soak in? It looks teasingly tempting, but here is the tip for this: CHECK THE SALT CONTENT OF THE SEASONING. I wasn't sure if you could see that, it's not that I'm yelling at you. What happens when you put a seasoning or spice with salt in it on your meat and then the return the meat to the fridge to flavor, the salt begins to pull the moisture out of the meat. By the time you grill the meat, it's already dried out. Yuck! It's probably the reason some people are a form of vegetarian. They were probably subjected to some horrible jerky-like meat that was more like a shoestring than a delicate, melt-in-your-mouth piece of heaven. If the first five ingredients of your favorite seasoning list salt, it's ok! Just wait to put it on the meat immediately before placing the meat on the grill.
My preference is to sprinkle just the top side of the pork showing.
When I put the pork on the grill, sprinkled side down, now I can easily season the bare side showing. Some people like to rub it into the meat with their hands, but I prefer the sanitation of avoiding touching raw meat, with or without gloves. Just my preference.
I did say I was making barbecued pork steaks, right? Well that comes later.
Because my grill gets so hot, immediately after putting the meat on I turn the heat down to about 400°, or about 75% of high.
I'll give you another priceless tip about grilling meat. All the flipping and moving and opening the lid is not necessary. How many times do you open the oven to turn a casserole dish? Exactly. See what I mean? It doesn't matter if it's hamburgers, steak, chicken, or pork. Now wieners and sausages, I will concede. Flip like a maniac. The others, you only need 3 flips. You don't believe me and I don't blame you. Here's how it goes.
Let's stick with pork steaks or chops. I'll write a different blog for steak, chicken, and burgers, because they are each in their own way slightly different to grill. After seasoning one side and placing that seasoned side face down on the grill and seasoning the bare side showing, you are going to start timing 15-15-10-10-. Those are times per side, according to your type of grill and thickness of pork. My pork steaks are about an inch thick, so I remain pretty true to this table, but I keep turning the heat down with each successful flip.
After initially putting the pork on the grill and turning the heat down to about 75% and closing the lid, start timing 15 minutes for that sided alone. If your pork is much thinner, I would first try a 5-5-5-5 table, and adjust accordingly. Use a knife to cut in the center of one, until your eyes become experienced at seeing the what the outside of a cooked pork steak looks like and one that's still pink on the inside. No pink in pork! Good in beef, bad in pork.
Back to the original 15-15-10-10. The first side is cooking for 15 minutes on 75% heat. You can kill this time by getting the rest of the meal ready or opening a bottle of wine or a fine Mexican beer.
When your phone timer goes off, this is the first flip of 3.
Turn each one, close the lid, and set your timer for another 15 minutes. Because my grill is so stinking hot and evenly heated, I take the opportunity to turn it down to about 50% now. I do NOT like blackened meat unless it's a Creole dish. If you do, leave the heat high and you'll get that mouth full of black and scorch. You're the cook, do what you like!
At the end of the second 15 minutes, you have cooked both sides of this porker for a total of 30 minutes.
Now is the final lap to the finish plate.
Now is the time for barbecue sauce.
I bet you want an explanation and I have one for you. If you don't believe me, try putting barbecue sauce on raw meat and throwing it on a hot grill, and tell me how dried up, burned up, flavorless it tastes. Instead what you have is meat that is 3/4ths cooked and just needs to be carrot-walked to the finish.
When your phone timer goes off for the second 15 minutes, this will make your second flip of 3. But this time, before closing the lid, you are going to slather that Porkenstein in the barbecue sauce of your choice.
Growing up in Texas for the past 50 years I'm going to go out on a limb and say I have probably tried almost every sauce to hit the market and delivered in my area. I have had my fill of local varieties. I have even had success and enjoyment from making my own. Out of all this experience and tasting, God finally decided to smile on me. And when He smiles, you need your sunglasses.
Please don't tell anyone and don't make fun, but my intelligent husband is a bit of a wrestling fanatic. I graciously humored him once and allowed him to order some phony sauce by a previous announcer guy, and that's when my Ray-Bans went on! I don't know who is the mastermind, the genius, the raw originality of combining ingredients to make the most perfect barbecue sauce on Planet Earth. Seriously, this is some badass barbecue sauce. It's even more beautiful because it comes in Original, which has a sweet taste to it, and Hot, for a little kick for me.
Now I usually prefer something more than a little, preferably a roundhouse kick to the jaw line. But I swear, it's as if they lined up each ingredient, and sparingly used each one to compliment the rest, so that no one taste was controlling the group. It's a mystical combination and I am floored by it each time we use it. It's that good. I can't believe it's not butter? I can't believe this wrestling announcer was fortunate to find a creator of some of the best barbecue I've had in my life. Bar none. Especially homemade, and I do not say or type that lightly. No sir, indeedy.
I need a cigarette after explaining the quality of the barbecue sauce.
With this second flip and using a brush, give those oinkers a good covering of your favorite sauce. Now we are at the 10 minute part. This can be a tricky part, especially with my grill. I will either turn the heat down one last time or I cut my two 10 minutes in half, making them 5 and 5.
Maybe it's easier if I had given the final results first. For 4 pork steaks or chops, about an inch thick, you want a total cooking time of 40-50 minutes, depending on the heat of the grill and how thick the pork is.
So far we have thirty minutes cooked, and flipped and put barbecue sauce on for another 10 minutes. When it's time for the last flip and brush of sauce, we are on the last 10 minutes. I take my cue from the last ten minutes. How did the underside looked? Did it looked shriveled and curling? If so, it's done and the sauce just needs to be heated on the pork, maybe 2 minutes. Is the pork oozing pinkish liquid on top when you gently press it with your fork or tine? It needs the entire 10 minutes or more. It's like checking a roast in the oven. Pretty soon you get an eye for it and it because easier with experience.
Time to turn off the grill, take the pork goodness off, and get ready to pair it with some rice and grilled corn-on-the-cob. Ahhhhh! I'll save that last one for another day.
Happy Cooking!
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