Thanks to Jamie Faitelson, a.k.a. Chef Hymie Grandé, diabetics now can choose from a trio of barbecue sauces with no high fructose corn syrup or processed sugars. The sauces are vegan friendly and all natural. It is also the first BBQ sauce to carry the American Diabetes Association mark on the bottle’s label, meaning it meets the ADA specifications.  Chef Hymie Grandé also donates a portion of the proceeds from every bottle sold to the American Diabetes Association. “Chef Hymie Grandé sauces are a unique blend of everything you would want in a barbeque sauce or rub. They taste great, but don’t have all the processed sugar or high fructose corn syrup that nutritionists everywhere are in agreement is so bad for you, says Faitelson.  He adds, “We use agave syrup as a natural sweetener—although it is much more expensive—but isn’t a healthier sauce with great taste worth it?”

You can order the barbecue sauce online here. If you live near New Jersey, the website has a list of stores that carry the sauces as well.

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I've tried many of the small grills like hibachis and Cobbs and they work fine, but still you have to dispose of the ash, clean them out, pack them up, and carry them home from the beach, picnic, campground, tailgating headquarters, or garden party (remember the Rick Nelson song?)  But with the EZ Grill it's a no- brainer because you just put out the coals with water, sand, or dirt, and then throw it in the trash.  It's called a single-use grill, and these have gained a 50% share of the charcoal grill market in Australia and the U.K.  It gets 90 minutes of cooking time and is in 13,000 stores in the U.S., including 7-Elevens.  They come in a regular size with four of $19.99 or a party size of two for $19.99.  You can find retail locations or order online here.

 

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I think I've died and gone to chile heaven because my new alliance with MexGrocer.com is proving to be very tasty, indeed.  Here's the deal: in return for writing posts to their blog, here, Nacho Hernandez, who runs the day-to-day operation of MexGrocer, sends me just about any product (they carry about 1,500) I want in order to evaluate it.  Recently he sent me the entire product line of chile pastes from MexiChefs that included chipotle, ancho, pasilla, chile de árbol, and guajillo.  My intention is to try them all, but I got stuck on the chipotle paste.

First I made a simple grilling sauce using butter, chipotle paste, red wine, and garlic powder and simply basted a pork chop while grilling it.  The result was delicious:

Well, that was easy, so I just put the paste in the refrigerator, where it stores nicely in its plastic tub.  A few days later I roasted a chicken and there were plenty of droppings left.  I scraped them out of the roasting pan, put them in the freezer and later removed the congealed fat.  I added homemade chicken stock, some flour dissolved in water and made a gravy.  I further thickened it with the chipotle paste and served the resulting gravy over garlic mashed potatoes.  Later, I wanted to spice up some baked potatoes, so I just mixed the paste half and half with butter and in 15 seconds I had one of the best toppings I've ever tasted.  Get the idea?  Order this great paste here--it will make your cooking life a lot easier!  One pound, which will last forever, is just $7.95!

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I've been grilling since I was eight years old, when my father taught how to do it on an old, rusty, kettle-style barbecue unit using lump charcoal because briquets hadn't been invented yet.  It was very difficult to control the heat of the fire, so cooking chicken required constant attention or the result would be a blackened, unsavory mess.  So I learned how to constantly move the pieces of chicken around on the grill, turning them constantly because the fat from the chicken would cause the fire to flare up.
   
These days, with sophisticated gas grills, the process is a lot easier because the heat of the fire remains much more even.  You hear a lot of talk about how cooking over charcoal or charcoal with wood chips is a lot more flavorful than gas, but the truth is that most of the "barbecue flavor" results from the fat and juices of the meat that are vaporized upon contact with the flames or coals.  This is why grilled meats cooked in restaurants taste great, and restaurant cooks rarely, if ever, use charcoal or wood chips to flavor any kind of meat.  I've grilled and smoked foods outdoors using many different kinds of barbecue units, but in my opinion gas grills are the quickest and easiest of them all.
   
Back in the old days we didn't know much about marinating or using rubs to further flavor the meats we were grilling.  As outdoor cooking has evolved over the decades, we now, fortunately, have a wide variety of products and techniques to add both flavor and spice to our outdoor cooking.  Since I'm nicknamed "The Pope of Peppers," you can probably figure out that I like my grilled foods spiced up.  I'm not talking killer heat here, but just enough chiles to make the food a lot more interesting.  Here are two of my favorite summertime grilling recipes, and they prove that you don't have to be Bobby Flay to make some great barbecue!

Citrus-Marinated Grilled Chicken

The concept of marinating chicken in a spicy fruit juice and then grilling it originated in Mexico and is quite popular throughout the American Southwest. The chicken is served with warm corn tortillas, salsa, and a side of pinto beans. The chicken can be cut off the bones and eaten topped with the salsa, or rolled up in up in the tortilla with salsa, like a soft taco.  Note: This recipe requires advance preparation.

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tomatillos, husks removed, chopped
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons ancho chile powder or New Mexican red chile powder
2 small chickens, cut in half lengthwise or cut up into pieces
Bottled salsa of choice, or make your own pico de gallo
Corn tortillas

In a saucepan, saute the onion, garlic, and tomatillos in the oil until soft. Add the remaining ingredients, except the chicken, and simmer for 10 minutes. Place in a blender and puree to form a sauce.
Marinate the chicken in the sauce in a non-reactive bowl in the refrigerator, covered, for at least 3 hours.
Grill the chicken until done, basting frequently with the sauce.  Chicken is done when the internal temperature is 160 degrees F.

Yield: 4 servings
Heat Scale: Medium

Grilled Corn with Spiced Butter

Why bother to heat up the kitchen and boil corn on the cob when you can use the grill and get even tastier results?  Spiced butters, also called compound butters, give corn a unique flavor dimension.  This one is based on Nitir kebe, an Ethiopian spiced butter that is an ingredient in many that country's dishes.  It certainly gives an exotic twist to a summertime favorite.  Be sure to buy ears with some of the stalk attached for a great handle.  The spiced butter freezes easily.  It's a good idea to have a spray bottle with water handy in case the husks start to burn. Note: This recipe requires advance preparation.

Spiced Butter

1/2 pound unsalted butter
1 teaspoon crushed chiltepins or pequins, or use ground cayenne chile
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

4 ears corn, husks and stalks attached

Allow the butter to soften at room temperature in a bowl and mix in all the ingredients for the spiced butter. Let sit for an hour to blend the flavors.

Remove any dried, brownish husks from the corn.  Pull back the husks, but don't remove completely,  and remove the silk. Soak the ears in cold water for 30 minutes to prevent the husks from burning.

Brush some of the butter on each of the ears and pull the husks back up over the ears and secure with string or a strip of corn husk.

Place on grill over a low fire, fairly far from the heat, and grill, turning often, for about 15 minutes.  
Yield: 4 servings
Heat Scale: Hot 

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Flay was flayed in the Green Chile Cheeseburger Throwdown held at the Buckhorn Tavern in San Antonio, New Mexico.  Flay flavored his cheeseburger not only with green chile, but wine vinegar, olive oil, "gourmet cheese" (whatever that is) and pickled onions.  The two judges, chile specialist Stephanie Walker from New Mexico State University and margarita expert Al Lucero, owner of Maria's Restaurant in Santa Fe, were not buying it.  They chose Bobby Olguin's burger over Flay's.  The story made the front page of the Albuquerque Journal on July 23 and the show will be repeated on the Food Network August 2.

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Who makes the best Green Chile Cheeseburger, Bobby Flay or Bobby Olguin?  Or, maybe, just maybe, Gwyneth Doland and myself!  Tonight on the Food Network, on "Throwdown with Bobby Flay," Bobby Olguin of the Buckhorn Tavern in San Antonio, New Mexico, goes up against Bobby Flay in a Green Chile Cheeseburger grill-off.  If you miss it, Food Network will repeat the show on August 2. That's Olguin on the left and Flay on the right.

In 2005, GQ Magazine rated the Buckhorn as having the seventh-best burger in America, so that gives some creds to Olguin, whose family has been doing this for many years. According to Olguin, his father, Mannie Olguin, built the Buckhorn in 1943. "Our liquor license dates back to 1918," he said. "It was transferred from my grandfather’s bar that used to be across the street."

While celebs like Flay get most of the attention, the Fiery Foods team just never gives up.  Click here to watch Gwyneth and myself grill Green Chile Cheeseburgers.  And click here for Gwyn's not-so-secret recipe.

Photo Credits:  Top, J. Clarson; Right, Sergio Salvador

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As I write this, the temperature here in the South Valley has been more than 95 degrees for thirteen consecutive days.  So it's not a good plan to fire up the oven to make pizza--but actually a gas grill does a great job.  Yes, you can use charcoal too, but just make sure it has burned down to coals so that you don't burn the dough.

And that was my problem yesterday--I was so afraid of burning the dough that I undercooked the pizza on the first pass and had to put it back on the grill to firm up and brown the crust.  The finished pizza should not flop; it should be stiff as the proverbial board.  Another word of warning: homemade dough is not uniformly thick, so it takes a lot of concentration and adjustment of the flame to get it cooked just right.

In this recipe I attempt to recreate the wonderful thin-crust pizza from wood-fired ovens in your very own backyard. The homemade crust, stolen fair and square from Steven Raichlen, has something that Pizza Doodle Express does not: chile. But if you're lazy and don't want to make your own dough, you can use a 12-inch, pre-baked pizza shell. You can also easily make the dough in your bread machine. It is very important to have a clean grill for this recipe, as any residue on the grill will give the crust an off flavor. Why not make both toppings and divide the pizza?

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Our European editor, Harald Zoschke, reports from southwest Germany: We drove to the Swiss border south of the other end of Lake Constance (Bodensee).  German BBQ smoker manufacturer "Farmergrill" threw a huge Grilling & BBQ Fest. Not only do they manufacure a wide line of quality smokers, they also run one of Germany's largest BBQ retail stores--we saw most likely more than 100 different grills and smokers there. Reps from various manufacturers were present, and the "Barbecue Academy" smoked excellent brisket (they publish a German BBQ magazine and hold hands-on BBQ classes right here at Lake Constance). Good food, entertainment including electric bull riding (not HZ), chile pepper eating contest, the BBQ Train, at left, with twin smokers, and more.  Great fun!  Here are more pix:

 

 

 

The Big Green Egg arrives in Deutschland!

The showroom at FarmerGrill, complete with a
friendly Burnese Mountain Dog!

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The major grilling season for 2009 has just begun and during these trying economic times, every griller is looking to save money. The Fiery Foods & Barbecue SuperSite has made arrangements with national supermarket chains to give all of our readers a free mobile grill.  Go here for the details on getting your free mobile grill!

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Barbecue expert Rick Browne is teaming up with us here at the SuperSite to strengthen our coverage of grilling and smoking.  For the past seven years, Rick has produced and hosted "Barbecue America," which is shown on PBS and reaches 230 markets in the U.S.  A writer, photographer, pitmaster, restaurant critic and consultant, he is also a Doctor of Barbecue, holding an honorary Ph.B (Doctor of Barbecue Philosophy) bestowed upon him by the prestigious Kansas City Barbeque Society for his expertise and commitment to barbecue. He is the author of ten books, including the recently-released The Best Barbecue on Earth (Ten Speed Press).  Personally, I'm thrilled by this development because Rick, in a short period of time, has become a good friend of mine, and we share like views on a number of subjects.  "Peas in a pod," is how Lois Manno, our art director, described us.  Here are Rick's articles so far on the SuperSite:

• Rick Browne's HOLY GRAIL of Barbecue
• Rick Browne's Plankin' It
• Rick Browne's Hottest Grillin' Gadgets
• Rick Browne's Barbecue Shell Game

 

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