Portable Gas Grill – Great For the Next Family Outing
Barbecuing outside is an activity practiced in many places around the world. It gives family and friends' time to get together, have some fun and eat good food. having a good grill to barbecue with is one of the keys to help make the cooking process much easier and help the food come out just perfect.
Having a huge gas grill is convenient when it comes to having the space to cook as much food as you want or need. but they can also be a little inconvenient. Let's not forget to run a huge grill you need to have a lot of gas for that grill to run. The space that it takes up can be quite inconvenient as well. but with a portable gas grill sizes and the cost of the grill and the cost to keep the grill running is really reasonable and quite affordable for the average barbecue cook. and outside of the size of the grill the food will still come out just as good on a small grill as it would on a big grill. not to mention you might find it easier to cook on a small grill.
One of the greatest things about the portable gas grill is that is its portability. When winter time comes you have to find some way to safely store your grill out of the nasty weather that winter may bring. but if you had a portable gas grill you would have no problem with finding a small storage area inside your house to store it safely. and to make your life easier it should not take but just one person to pick it up and move it. The portability of a reasonable sized gas grill is great for storing and saving space but obviously the most important thing about its portability is that you are not just limited to cooking outside in your own back yard. taking your portable gas grill to the park or a friend's house is more than easy and can give you a lot of option that big grills cannot give you.
When you start thinking of the pros and cons of owning a big gas grill or a small portable gas grill you may just find that a portable one might be more reasonable for your situation. Especially when you think about the fact that you might have to cook for a lot of people all at one time about one or two times a year. so the question you have to ask yourself is that one or two times a year worth the extra money.
The old saying goes the bigger the better but in this case this may not be the truth. all though there are a lot perks to owning a big grill but a smaller portable gas grill has its perks as well. just think about one of the last perks I'm going to mention and how good it sounds. When you're done cooking and eating and it is time to clean the grille and close up shop. What type of task would you rather have to face? a big grille which in turn makes a big mess or a small one that will leave you with a small mess.
The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne IN
Driving northwest out of Austin through the Texas Hill Country, a rugged, undulating terrain of limestone canyons bristling with prickly pear cactus and shaggy with cedar trees, you eventually come to the dusty little city of Llano, population 3,350.
No matter what else you do there, make a pilgrimage to Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que. Walk past several rectangular pits, admire the small mountain of mesquite wood, and line up at an old steel closed pit, salivating as the aroma of smoking meats wafts through the still Texas air.
When it is your turn, consider the brisket, ribs, sausage, chicken and cabrito (goat) on the pit’s grate. Tell the pitman exactly what you want, and he will slice it to order. no matter what else you choose, though, you must also get the big Chop. If you don’t, it is as if you had never made the trip to Cooper’s, or to Llano, at all.
In the lexicon of barbecue, there are shrines and temples and meccas. but I think of Cooper’s as a museum.
It’s a place where the pits, with the pulley system that opens and closes them, compose a beautiful barbecue still life. where barbecue hounds come to appreciate a particular style of cooking.
And where a rare masterpiece is on display: a glistening, pepper-flecked, two-inch-thick, bone-in pork chop.
The big Chop, like the other meats at Cooper’s, is prepared differently from other barbecue in Central Texas. Cooper’s does not use post oak and does not employ indirect cooking, with the meat distanced from the burning wood.
Rather, it burns scads of mesquite branches to embers, then shovels the coals into the pits, where they smolder directly beneath the meats. The method, drawing on the cattle drives of bygone years, is called “cowboy style.”
The chop is seasoned with little more than salt and pepper, put over a hot fire for a few minutes to sear, then moved to a much cooler part of the pit, where it slow-roasts over the mesquite coals for about 2 1/2 hours.
Few barbecue restaurants, even in the pork-centric regions of North Carolina and Memphis, offer pork chops. Ribs, shoulder and even the labor-intensive whole hog are far more common.
Perhaps that’s because pork chops, which come from the loin, traditionally have been a costlier cut of meat than the others. Barbecue has long been a culinary folk art, made by commoners from the cheap cuts of meat.
The reason might also have to do with traditional notions of low-and-slow barbecue. Pork chops require only a couple of hours of cooking, in contrast with, say, 18 and up for brisket.
Although Cooper’s other meats are delicious (a visit to Cooper’s is third on Texas Monthly’s “bucket list”), the chop is what landed the place on the barbecue map. but it wasn’t on the menu until Cooper’s was 30 years old.
The place was opened in 1962 by Tommy Cooper, whose friend, Terry Wootan, recalls that he would pester Cooper to serve pork chops, to no avail.
Cooper died in an automobile accident in 1979. When Wootan leased and then finally bought the restaurant in 1992, adding the big Chop to the menu was his first order of business.
“It’s so moist and has a different flavor,” he says. “everybody in Texas is beef, beef, beef. but we sell close to 50 percent pork. (Beef) brisket is about 35 to 40 percent of our business, but the pork chops are about 20 percent, which is a lot for pork in Texas.”
Cooper’s incinerates the locally plentiful mesquite to embers because using the fast-burning wood “naked,” as is done with slow-burning post oak, for such long periods can give the meat an acrid aftertaste. that means the meat at Cooper’s isn’t as deeply smoky as that at other central Texas barbecue joints.
“all of our meat has a good smoky flavor,” Wootan says. “but it isn’t real smoky. I don’t like it too smoky.”
Creating it at home
Soon after returning home from my visit to Cooper’s, I longed to re-create the big Chop in my back yard.
But my Weber is not a giant rectangular pit that can accommodate searing-hot coals at one end and much cooler embers at the other. I don’t have a fireplace to burn down logs of mesquite. And Wootan won’t reveal any spices he deploys beyond salt and pepper.
Still, I figured I could use the basic direct-indirect method of cooking, adjusting the time to compensate for the comparatively hotter temperature of the Weber. And because the big Chop’s seasoning, whatever it might be, is minimal, I’d choose the Central Texas classic rub: just salt and pepper, plus a hint of cayenne.
I seared the chop over charcoal for a few minutes on each side, then added wood chips and calculated that even placed as far from the fire as possible, it would cook relatively quickly. (Hey, even barbecue ain’t rocket science.)
Sure enough, after about a half-hour on the cooler side of the grill, the chop came off juicy and just barely pink in the center. When I took a bite: Well, I won’t say it took me back to Cooper’s, but I could taste a resemblance.
Maybe you don’t want something so Flintstonian. in that case, a standard one-inch-thick chop is a fine stand-in, and quicker, too.
What about a sauce?
When you stand at the Cooper’s pit and choose your chop, the pitman will offer to dunk it into a thin vinegar-tomato dipping sauce. but the Hill Country is home to apple orchards, which got me to thinking back home that especially in the fall, when apples are ripe, they would surely make a nice salsa to go with the big Chop.
So I made one. For the one-inch chops, I concocted a cider marinade.
But you won’t find any of that city-slicker stuff in Texas. The meat is neither brined nor marinated. And you either assent to the dipping sauce bath or you forgo it and scoot off with your chop into the dining room, decorated with mounted deer heads.
Mesquite-Smoked Texas-Style big Chop
It doesn’t get much simpler than this: salt, pepper, meat. but the alchemy of smoke transforms these extra-thick chops from simple to sublime.
You’ll need to soak 1 cup of mesquite chips in water for an hour, then drain them.
Serve with a side of your favorite mustard-based barbecue sauce.
3 teaspoons kosher salt
3 teaspoons coarse-ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
2 bone-in pork chops, 2 inches thick (1 to 1 1/4 pounds each)
Combine the salt, black pepper and the cayenne pepper, if desired, in a small bowl. Rub the mixture over the chops.
Prepare the grill for direct and indirect heat. If using a charcoal grill, light the charcoal or wood briquettes; when the briquettes are ready, distribute them on one side of the cooking area. For a very hot fire, you should be able to hold your hand about 6 inches above the coals for about 1 or 2 seconds.
If using a gas grill, preheat to high (650 degrees) for 30 minutes. Wrap the mesquite chips in an aluminum foil packet with a few holes poked in it to allow smoke to escape.
When the coals are white-hot, place the chops on the grill directly over the fire. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, then turn them over and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, so the meat has a deep caramel color and a little char.
Use tongs to move the chops to the indirect-heat side of the grill. If using a charcoal grill, scatter the wood chips over the coals. If using a gas grill, place the packet of mesquite chips between the grate and the burners/briquettes, close enough to the heat to induce smoke.
Close the grill lid. Smoke for 10 to 12 minutes, then turn the chops over and cook for 10 to 12 minutes or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the side of the chops registers 140 to 145 degrees (medium-rare to medium). The chops should have a rich-brown, lightly charred exterior that glistens with juices.
Transfer to a platter to rest for about 5 minutes. Makes 2 to 4 servings.
Cooking Magic with Gas Grills
When I was a child, my father would use a simple charcoal grill to cook up feasts for all of us kids to enjoy. While we didn’t watch him work because he wouldn’t let us, it was an absolute blast to eat his conduct. when I was old enough, he decided to show me the secret to his technique and I remember it to this day. I was finally able to put it into practice when he handed the barbecue over to me when I was a teenager. That’s when I cook my first full meal and although there were a few mistakes, I could see why it was so much fun. I was willing to burn a few pieces of food because I knew it was necessary in order to learn how to do things properly. my father taught me that patients would pay off and if I was careful with my technique, my mistakes would be rewarded with cooking improvement in the future. this proved to be true and now I consider myself one of the best barbecue masters who is able to use any gas grills on the market today.
One thing you should always remember is you really need to be organized because it can get quite messy if you are not. Remember to think about what you want to cook and then by all of the ingredients necessary without rushing yourself. It’s very important to come in with a plan so that you don’t end up burning absolutely everything on the grill at the same time. you should also try different things while getting your whole family to help at the same time. One of my best memories was being able to contribute in my own small way and your children are sure to enjoy this aspect of grilling food in your backyard as well. and as always, when everything is done and make sure that you take the time to maintain your equipment properly so that it will last for a very long time to come.
What Barbecue Grilling Tools Do You Need?
The following is a list of all the barbecue grilling tools you need to cook some great barbecue. there are some items on this list that you definitely already know you need and some that you may not have thought of before. you need all these items to make great barbecue:
1. Barbecue Fork
You definitely need a barbecue fork if you are going to barbecue on a regular basis. you can clearly see how you use these barbecue grilling tools - you use them to turn the meat, move the meat around on the grill, carve the meat, and tell if the meat is cooked.
2. Oven Mitts
Oven mitts are something you need to be able to barbecue well. If you use foil to grill fish, you need to have good oven mitts that can help you move the foil around and pick it up. Meats and vegetables on skewers are also a favorite that require these barbecue grilling tools to keep them turning and moving them and taking them off of the grill. you should wear oven mitts when basting meat so you don't get burned by the flames. this only works if the oven mitts are flame retardant.
3. Basting Brushes
If your barbecuing takes awhile then you will have to have basting brushes to do this well. The reason you have to get several of these barbecue grilling tools is you want to keep the flavors separate and not contaminate any of them. a couple of brushes are also good for oiling your grill before you cook. Keeping your grill well-oiled is going to keep your food from sticking.
4. a Grill Brush
These barbecue grilling tools are essential so you need to get a good brass or steel brush depending on whether your grill is porcelain or cast iron.
5. Grilling Tongs
These barbecue grilling tools help you turn hot dogs, sausage, burgers, and tortillas. they are also helpful with moving charcoals and grates on the grill. these barbecue grilling tools work on gas and charcoal grills.
6. Wide Grilling Spatula
In some cases, grilling tongs are not going to work because the food can fall apart. a wide grilling spatula is the best choice in that situation. It works great with hamburgers and other foods that fall apart easily.
The grilling tools mentioned above are all basic tools. there are lots of other barbecue accessories you can use as well. do a search online and find out which.
