On My Grill

Found this sweet little insight into the needs and important points in finding a true southern BBQ place to eat at.
We added the 15 points from hillfamily.net and our gereral aggrement or comments to accompany eachimportant line if this culinary bible passage.

1. Pork. ‘Nuff said. (best meat, cooks the softest, tastes the best easy to agree)

2.Cheap. Who can really enjoy a good meal if you know you’ll be working overtime to pay it off? A good pork plate, including slaw, fries, and a pickle, should run about $5-$6. Ribs — baby-back, of course — might be closer to $10 with all the fixins’. (sorry that not too many have a full rack fries and salw for under 10, but I agree this should price out like home cooking and taste like it too.)

3. Ma-Pa owned. Sure, there are good barbecue chain restaurants, a few of which we rated. But the appeal of barbecue is tasting a person’s homemade sauce, which usually tastes so good that friends and neighbors ask for the recipe. Then the person has a good start at establishing his or her own restaurant. (good is good, I love Fred Flemming’s Chain in Florida, great pulled pork and sauces, but ma and pa atmosphere is best.)

4. A place where everyone knows everyone else — except for us, usually. When Jim the Sheriff and Bob the barber come in for lunch, Louise hollers at them, “Hey boys. C’mon in — your table is open. I’ll bring y’all your usual.” (this is nice in all restaurants, only m,ore important in a BBQ etting)

5. Most of the staff should be plump–a sure sign that the product is worth tastin’.
(fat and happy, and Fat guys rule are two of our facts of this website.)

6. No coupons. Any barbecue restaurant that has to lure you in with a coupon isn’t worth tastin’. It should be all word-of-mouth marketing.
( I would never say no to a coupon, so I can live with paying less if they want me too, though it isnt needed for the right BBQ)

7. The aroma of roasting pork should permeate your senses as soon as you pull in the parking lot–even before you open your car door.
(Wood, pork and fries in the air.)

8. It’s got to be casual enough for entire families–great uncle Norm, Great Grandma Ruth, and little toddler Nick, who can’t sit still or keep his voice down low, no many how many reminders from his step-daddy.

9. Southern accents. Southern town. Southern folks. Southern Southern Southern.
(Now this makes total sense since I have moved to Charlotte, no other will do to me)

10. Vinegar based barbecue is our favorite, but tomato-based, which is sweeter, is a close second, followed by mustard-based. True Southerners would quickly step-up to define which geographical region caters to which type of barbecue–vinegar, sweet, or mustard-based. However, each restaurant caters to what they like best, so we’ve concluded it’s a Southern myth. Each restaurant serves pork just how they like it.
(pulled pork just needs to be soft and flavorful with the right sauces in bottles.)

11. Tributes to the pig in all forms around the restaurant: Pig pictures on the outside signs and menu, pig statues in the waiting area, and bathrooms, pig toothpick holder at the cashier’s station . . . you get the picture. You just gotta be reminded of what animal you’re eating.

12. Greasy fries. You know the kind — fried in the left-over dirty greasy from yesterday.

13.Tart, crisp coleslaw.

14. Free refills on soda, and keep ‘em comin’. If you have to ask your waitress for a refill, she isn’t quick enough. We need something to wash down the grease.

15. If it’s a chain restaurant, it has to specialize in barbecue and preferably mention that in the name. Regular all-American grills with a wide range of food choices don’t produce good barbecue.

More sauces, or more to be exact “Moore Sauces”.

Picked up an army of sauces,all of which claim to be the bomb on their labels and when my hunger eyes fell upon them. Sauces and marinades may be one of the worst aisles to walk in when you are hungry since sacues are just advertising flavor and go directly to the heart of a hunger problem with their labels and promises of “finger licking, smackin dipping spices!”.

So I picked up on special a bunch of Moore’s Original and had it on chicken today, and followed it up with more from the Grill Mates line tonight on yet another helping of Barbque chicken sandwiches on hoagie rolls. I think this gave me a nice platform for tasting sauces that now fill my entire pantry.

First up was Moores Original Marinade. Moores makets with the very classic label so I am to believe that people have been trying to “not forget the Moore’s!” for half a century. I think the family favorite look and a family standard angle got me to try it, so hats off to their marketing department.

When I did my research, turns out they are around for 30 years now and from Alabama, so that sounds like goo burger people to me.

From their site:
“Moore’s Original Marinade was introduced thirty years ago at a steakhouse in a small town called Jasper, Alabama (just north of Birmingham). Due to popular demand for our Original Hickory flavor we decided a complement was needed, thus Moore’s Teriyaki Marinade was created. In 2004, we added a sauce to our portfolio with Moore’s Buffalo Wing Sauce (Medium Flavor).”

I also got this medium wing sauce and have to let them in on a secret as I am from the Buffalo region. We dont have Buffalo sauce in Buffalo, we dont call them Buffalo wings. (END SECRET)

They are just “wings”, cause the fact that they belong to Buffalo is a given(Go Bills), and the slightly thick light rust colored sauce you call “Buffalo sauce”, is Frank’s Red Hot.

Ill just use Franks if I want that genre of sauce, as everything is is a ripoff of Franks.

Check out Moore’s cool website if you like sauces, I don’t give them my full love, but it’s a great website if nothing else.

All Hail Frank.

Next on the menu for today was more of the Grill Mates line of sauces. These Grill Mates labels are pretty mainstream. If you read my sauce recommendations, then you know I like to pick obscure sauces from local bottlers and with a guy with a cowboy hat on the label. I generally pick my sauces on the assumptions that my manhood is being judged by the label. This is why I chose Stubbs Sauce originally, since it has a nice macho southern black cowboy on the cover assuring me that it will be good. Stubb’s sauce was good, so why change the formula.

Grill mates is corporate standard looking and nothing creative about it, but it is really moving up my ladder. I got alot of the Grill Mates rubs and spices I used in past ribs recipes and all have been a success. I tried the Grill Mates Rub which was a sweet almost cinnamon flavored rub that lasted past the grill and to the plate. I tried the excellent Montreal Steak spice by Grill Mates, which I can only describe as “cracked pepper and rocksalt”. The Montreal spices are spices and pepper and salt and I really liked on any meat you want to add some pepper and heat to.

Tis time around I got the Montreal seasoning sauce from Grill mates which is the same spices black pepper flavor in a thick black/brown sauce. The sauce provides what the rub did, but I would say get the rub. The rub was saltier and will last through grilling better than sauce would.

The montreal line from Grill Mates is good and worth having in your arsenal, go with the rub version.

Now the other I got was the Grill Mates Hickory Bar-b-que sauce. Just look at the photo and see how dark red and thick the sauce is through the glass bottle. This sauce is unpourable and thick. You will need to do the butter-knife in the bottle trick to get this on your food. This sauce is very sweet and tasty and has a stronger and better hickory flavor than any others we have tried.

Grill Mates continues to be a solid choice and better than the higher priced and fancier marketed options by the other labels. Get the Hickory for your next outdoor grillin’ and I promise you will be pleased with this thick sticky mess in a bottle.

So the recap for those who need to catch up on the sauces I spend all my families mortgage money on? You should grab Uncles Yammys, Chocktow Hot Bar-B-Que, and this new Grill Mates Hickory BBQ.

Check out past posts on sauces we taste tested. It has been a long and tough road having to eat ribs, chicken and pork roasts covered in these sauces, but we did it all for the readers who love sticky spicy, hot and kickin meat “dipped in stuff”.

Red Pepper Sauce
Great Sauces Part 1 - End of 2006 Post
Stubb’s Moppin Sauce - The Orange Stuff!
Stubb’s Orange Stuff in Action On Spareribs
Uncle Yammy’s Sacue Post
Sauces Part 2 Continued Adventures

So this year and repeated newsleter topics has been littered with dipping, sloshing, saucing and basting in drippy sticky sweet and hot sauces.

We have brought to light Lousinanna red papper sauce by Lawrys here
http://www.charlottecritic.com/a-great-marinade-choice/
Which is a decent standard choice for mainstream iteams.

We basted our spareribs in Stubbs Mopping Sauce, which is an odd yellow sauce with alot of flavor but pretty much cooked off on the grill and our spare ribs were fair at best.
http://www.charlottecritic.com/oh-stubbs-you-devil/

We have sung the praises of the classic sauces and some of the best around like Frank’s Red Hot, Maries Blue Cheese dressing (for pizza and wings), 57 sauce wich is a nice change up all around good sacue and the two “Grill Masters” Rubs we tried shown here.

Well we have a few others to add to this list which include what I believe is my pick of the year so far, and ironically is the last one I have tried in the quest for the best baste.

Our latest include: Uncle Yammy’s Grillin Sauce: Original Recipe which is bottled in Greenville, NC and likely is only local in availablity.

You’ll see in our post that this is the pick of the year and along with the Steak and Chop sauce by Lawrys our favorites in my home now.

The second of our favorites has been a staple in this house now or the last 9 months since first using it. I have made countless baby back ribs and can say that if you want an original and flavorful way to prepare them soak them and cook them smoothered in the Lawry’s Steak & Chop with garlic and black pepper. The ribs we basted and precooked in this sauce was the most flavorful after all was said and done, and was by far the best ribs we have ad in this house to date.

This is an ongoing post and I will add the also rans here, which are a handful of the more recent sauces we tried with our meat, most of which are good but not overly impressive.

See the next in our ongoing sauce search here.

Original recipe Yammys sauce is gonna be my pick of the year. It was basically the last one I picked to soak some Chicken breasts in and have on the grill. I was walking and daydreaming at Bloom when this label screamed hometown flavor at me. You can’t get a more local look or feel that this white on white bottle of red sauce. You can see other Yamm’y Inventions here http://www.uncleyammys.com/

Pop the top to this local bottled excellent product and you taste honey sweetness with red pepper fire underneath. They tout themselves as sweet with a little bite, but the truth is Uncle Yammy’s Original Grillin Sauce has a bit more bite then they advertise. This sauce if not cooked off on a hot grill will make a medium to spicy cut of meat best suited for men.

This is a semi hot sauce with definate stick to your finger sweet ingredients.

Made for beef pork, fish or Chicken and strong enough flavor to last past the grillin, this is my personal choice of the year. Along with the excellent Lawrys Steak and Chop these are some sauces I will stock in my fridge all grillin season.

Yu can follow along with some of the local and not-so-local flavors we have tried on our great sauce search here.

Kinda took a nap on this one, as I was too busy eating those ribs you saw we made last week for the Bills - Dolphins Showdown.

The end result of the Sunday Ribs Experiment Part One - as you can see was sizzling on the grill and tasted great. The Stubbs sauce was tangy and with a distinct vinegar tang to it.

The ribs cam out spicy from the rub and ‘peppery’ while not the kind of heat that builds up as you pound your way through them, just the kind of spice that makes the drink you have that much better.

The problem was how fatty those spare ribs were. Lots of spots that just didnt eat well, and I will not skip over the baby backs in the future.

Keep an eye out for the baby back experiment at the next Dolphins - Bills game in Buffalo.

Here is today’s victim of my sketchy cooking skills, the star of our afternoon show, the 5lb pork spare ribs.

Been looking at the ribs on sale at Lowes Foods all week and have been thinking about how good they will taste, if only I can put together an occasion to eat them on.

Well The Bills at Miami? that seems like a good enough occasion for just about any food that requires an entire roll of towels to eat.

Since I am a Bills man and a “Yankee” from way back, I am trying to morph my style from the wings of the north to the pork ribs of the south. So far I am enjoying the higher yield ribs much more than I ever liked wings.

I had to beef up my arsenal of spices and reference a few recipes to get the flavor I was looking for, and as it turns out I can’t wait till Sunday so these are going to be “Nebraska at USC Saturday Night Football Ribs”.

Actually just eat ribs all weekend is the answer!

The Baby Back ribs are on sale for $2.99 a pound at Lowes foods, and i think today is the last day of that sale. Those ribs were previously frozen so I decided to pass on that deal.

So I picked up this 5lb slab of spare ribs, and I intend to cook them till they taste as soft as anything in the market.

And here’s the line up of the ussual suspects that may or may not have a hand in today’s pork sparerib process.

The rub we mixed up is Garlic powder, a teaspoon of minced fresh garlic (all I had in the fridge), onion salt, salt, pinch of red pepper and the bulk of it made up of a tasty pre-packed pork rub I bought.

The ‘pre-packaged pork rub’ is basically chili-powder, garlic and vinegar, so its basically same as what we are going for.

And as you see in the pic, we gave it a pre-baste with a few spoonfuls of our featured hero of the afternoon ”Stubbs Mopping Sauce”.

I wet a paper towel with a bit of olive oil and rubbed the meat down so it sticks in there good too.

You can check out the post where we praise the Stubbs got here. and you can see the full images from our rib bakin’ session here in the photo gallery.

The finish product will be in the blog tonight after a 8 hours run in the oven to soften them up.

spare ribs, baby back ribs, ribs recipe, cooking ribs

Oh yes! I have gone back to my old love the Stubbs brand of southern style sauces.

Stubbs proclaims on the bottle “Ladies and Gentlemen, I Am A Cook!”

Stubbs is bottled and made in Texas and has a line of about half a dozen sauces for your meats.

They have chicken and pork targetted sauces and this new one I just came across today while putting together my football weekend ribs.

Moppin sauce pretty much is a perfect name for image in my mind. A thick spicy sauce with a distinct aftertaste of red-wine vinegar which will soak into the meat ad leave it tangy.

You can check out this sauce in action in our all day adventure this weekend getting some huge spare ribs ready for the grill and tomorrows Buffalo Vs Miami NFL game.

You can see Stubbs get his moment in the spotlight all over our spareribs here.

And then see Stubbs in action in our image gallery.

Cooking Burgers On The Grill 

• If you can’t find ground pork in the meat counter, ask your butcher to grind pork from a shoulder butt or picnic roast. Lean ground pork helps the burger keep its’ shape while cooking.
• For flavour variations, add 1 tsp (5 mL) or more of any of the following to the meat mixture - dry mustard, garlic powder, oregano, savoury or onion powder.
• Lean ground pork is great for juicy burgers. Dress them up, brush with barbecue sauce or keep them plain and simple.
• Burgers should always be cooked to well done.

Cooking Ribs!

• May be precooked in simmering water for about 30 to 45 minutes, if desired.
• Cook over direct heat on low to medium, turning often.
• Brush with sauce during last 10 to 15 minutes of cooking to prevent charring.

Get more of these swet insights here

“Experience the exciting flavors of Louisiana with this spicy combination of authentic Tabasco Brand Seasoning, garlic, onion and lemon juice.  Excellent on chicken, beef, pork and seafood. Also makes great Spicy Buffalo Wings. ”

Used it once, maybe the ribs were so good because i’m just that good around the kitchen?

Used it twice, and again the same fantastic perfect heat and tasty ribs, I now mustgive credit to this fine product. I have been trying to sing the praises of the dipping sauce and marinade’s I find since they are such a large part of home cooking.

Trying to defeat the boredom of home cooking we allseek the next flavor for our arsenal, and this is another winner in my gunrack.

LOUISIANA RED PEPPER MARINADE

I am looking forward to usig this on shrimp skewers as the website suggests.

marinade, buffalo wings, spicy sauces, pork chops, pork ribs, shrimp recipes

Did a bit of soul-food seaching and trying to find something to mix it up as I begin my 9th or 10th grill out of this summer. I have gone fast and furious griling since buying my gas powered beauty, and heres the latest adventure, a Carolina classic? (no idea) 

Ingredients:
5- pound Boston Butt roast
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups water
1 can (8 oz.) tomato sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
- Salt and pepper, to taste
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon chili powder - Dash hot pepper sauce

Instructions:
Randomly pierce the surface of the roast with a sharp knife. In
a Dutch oven, brown roast on all sides in hot oil. In a mixing
bowl, combine remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour sauce
over roast and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 2
hours or until pork is fork-tender. Baste roast with sauce
during cooking time. Slice or chop to serve.