4 Ingredient Challenge–August

Welcome to this month’s On Our Grills challenge, where we take 4 ingredients and see what we can come up with.  This months ingredients are short ribs, celery, peaches, and gluten-free pasta.  This is definitely a group of ingredients I can work with, and work with them I did.  I enjoyed these ingredients so much, I came up with a full meal that included an appetizer, side dish, main dish, and a dessert.

For the appetizer, I made a grilled celery stuffed with cream cheese and blue cheese.  You may ask, why grill celery, because the grill makes it taste better, just like any vegetable, and it also takes way some of that celery stringiness.  For the celery I dressed it up in a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  Tossed it on the grill and flipped a few times until it was a bit tender, but still had a firmness to it.  The celery then was filled with a cream cheese and blue cheese mixture.  Check out the full recipe at Grilled Celery with Blue Cheese.

The main dish was more of a challenge, not because of the ingredient, but because my smoker had some issues.  I was using a Cookshack Smokette, and there was a bit of moisture in it which was tripping the GFI outlet.  I ended up having to run the smoker on an extension cord to a non GFI outlet and let run for many hours to get it to dry out.  This delayed me a day in cooking this meal, but it could have been worse.  I smoked beef short ribs for about 6 hours with an Asian rub and then glazed them with a tasty Asian glaze recipe for the last hour of smoking.  This ended up being a perfect rib recipe, and something a bit different then what I have done in the past with rubs.  For the complete recipe and details check out Asian Short Ribs.

Served a long side of these ribs was a delicious Asian pasta salad made with a gluten-free pasta made with corn and quinoa (quinoa is a wonderful ingredient).  Besides the corn and quinoa pasta the other key ingredients were baby corn, water chestnuts, green onions, and sugar snap pears and an Asian dressing made from a gluten-free soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, and Chinese Five-Spice seasoning.  For complete recipe and details check out Gluten-Free Asian Pasta Salad.

To top it this great meal, I made a grilled peach cobbler, which just may have been my favorite part of the entire meal.  The peach cobbler was actually very simple to make, but was very tasty.  I used a combination of butter, brown sugar, granola, and cinnamon with the peaches.  The peaches ended up being perfectly ripe, which made splitting and pitting them a piece of cake and the perfect amount of sweetness for the last part of this meal.  For the complete recipe, check out Grilled Peach Cobbler.

Be sure to check out the other members of the On Our Grills 4 Ingredient Challenge:

The BBQ Grail:

Larry Gaian started his blog in 2007,initially to document the author’s quest to find the perfect backyard BBQ experience. Since that time The BBQ Grail has become one of the more popular BBQ blogs on the internet.

No Excuses BBQ:

Paul Haight started his blog in January,2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control.

The Oshawa Ogre:

Wilfred is somewhat of a newcomer to the BBQ scene having only done standard grilling for most of his 50 years,He found and became passionate about Low &Slow about 2 years ago. and that passion also morphed into a second hobby which is writing

Grill Adventures:

Started in March,2010 by Marc Van Der Wouw as a way to document his journey to better and healthier eating. The grill has a special place in Marc’s heart. Everything he makes is an adventure.

The Dutchess Cooks:

After years of cooking,grilling,baking and reading other people’s blogs,Hanneke Eerden thought,“why not start my own blog?”,and she did,in 2010. It’s not her goal to publish or come up with fancy and difficult recipes:just good and delicious food with an international twist!

Nibble Me This:

Chris North started his blog so he could share the misadventures of live fire cooking. Mark has no culinary training,he’s just entertaining himself with fire and food.

Kristina Vanni “The Daily Dish”

Kristina has been writing “The Daily Dish” for www.BetterRecipes.com for the past two years. The blog covers a wide variety of recipes, but firing up the grill truly lights up her passion for food! She was named “America’s Next Pork Personality” by Guy Fieri for one of her grilled pork dishes, won the outdoor grilling division of the National Beef Cook-Off, and her winning grilled lamb-burger took her all the way to the land Down Under with Meat and Livestock Australia. The “4-Ingredient Challenge” is a fun and exciting way to get creative on the grill!