So many people out there believe that the grill is primarily meant for meat.  Try this amazing grilled vegetable sandwich and you will be convinced vegetables do belong on the grill.  This sandwich uses a combination of many vegetables.  These vegetables are then mixed with an amazing lemon saffron mayonnaise that brings the flavors to a new level.  The credit for using the lemon saffron mayonnaise goes to my beautiful and wonderful wife (Her name is Michelle and not “The Wife”), I originally wanted to use a sun dried tomato pesto mayonnaise.  The lemon saffron mayonnaise goes great with the grilled vegetables and pulls all flavors together very nicely.

Lemon Saffron Mayonnaise:

• 2 pinches of crumbled saffron
• Zest of a lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cup mayonnaise (full fat)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced

Whisk together all the mayonnaise ingredients together in a bowl, cover, and place in refrigerator.  It is best after letting all the ingredients bond together.

Grilled Vegetable Sandwich:

• 2 portabella mushrooms, cleansed
• 1 jicama, peeled and slice into 1/4 inch rounds
• 1 zucchini, sliced into thin long strips
• 1 yellow squash, sliced into thin long strips
• 1 cucumber, sliced into thin long strips
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 orange bell pepper
• Olive oil
• Flavored focaccia bread

On a medium-hot grill place the bell peppers on the grill over direct heat.  Grill until blackened (rotate periodically).  Remove peppers from the grill and place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap.

Lightly oil the remaining vegetables with the olive oil and place on the grill.  For the smaller vegetables it is best to use a vegetable grill rack.  Grill until cooked (flipping halfway) through out and remove from the grill.

Take the bell peppers out of the bowl and remove the skins, seeds, and membranes.  Dice all vegetables into small squares.  Place in a clean bowl and mix with as much of the Lemon Saffron mayonnaise as desired.

Build sandwiches with the flavored focaccia bread, I used a tomato, basil focaccia bread that came as an 8 inch round loaf, that I sliced into quarters.

Do not forget to enter the Bacon Explosion Giveaway.  Entries close on July 4th at Midnight.

I offer you a chance to win

prepare and smoked by the original creators, The BBQ Addicts.  I am going to give you multiple chances to win the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.  To enter you must live in the continental United States and perform at least one of these actions:

• Become a fan of my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/jasonsbbqadventures and post the comment, I am a fan, on this post with the same first and last name you are registered with Facebook.
• Retweet the following message on Twitter: “@BBQAdventures is giving away a Bacon Explosion created by the @BBQAddicts, enter at: http://bit.ly/8YJ9Me.  Once retweeted, come back here and post a comment with the status URL of the twitter post, should look like http://twitter.com/YourUserName/status/AbunchOfNumbers.  For instructions on obtaining your status URL visit: http://www.technoskillonline.com/2010/05/how-to-get-status-url-of-twitter-and-facebook/

Each person can enter up to 2 times, by performing both of these actions. You have until July 4, 2010 to enter and the winner will be announced within a few days after the contest ends.

Ingredients:

• 1 hamburger bun
• 1 hamburger patty grilled to perfection
• Ketchup (lots of it)
• 7 whole red grapes

To construct the Grape Hamburger, you need to start with the bottom bun

Place grilled hamburger patty on top of the bottom bun

Place lots of ketchup on the hamburger patty

Stack the 7 whole red grapes on top of the ketchup (The ketchup acts like the glue to hold the grapes)

Place top bun on top of the red grapes

Eat and enjoy

Now I promised him that this would become my most popular post to date.  He is going to be asking me how many people have read it every day till I tell him that it has surpassed any other post that I have made.  So if you can Stumble it, Digg it, Like It, Email It, and just spread it out to as many people as possible, I would appreciate it.

Interested in trying these little great appetizers?  If so, make you first attempt making them on World MOINK Ball Day, Saturday June 5th 2010.  If you plan to participate put yourself on the MOINK Ball Day Map.

Here is my first attempt at them.

(People started eating them up before I could take a picture)

Ingredients:

• Plenty of meatballs (ALL BEEF)
• Enough bacon to wrap each meatball with a 1/2 a slice.
• Good BBQ Rub (Mine)
• Good glaze or BBQ Sauce (I used my favorite store bought BBQ sauce)
• Toothpicks

Instructions:

• If using pre-made frozen meatballs, let them partially thaw out so you can get the toothpick into the meatballs
• Slice the bacon in half
• Wrap the sliced bacon around the meatballs and secure the bacon with a toothpick
• Season with a good amount of BBQ rub on each MOINK ball
• Grill (indirectly, preferably with smoke) until the bacon is close to being done
• Towards the end of grilling, glaze/sauce them up
• Remove from grill and serve immediately

This was my first attempt, they were extremely easy to prepare and cook, but the taste was surprisingly amazing.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup sweet chili sauce
• 2 tablespoons garlic powder

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Cover and place in refrigerator for about an hour to allow flavors to bond.

At first, Miss Sweetie was attracted to Mr. Promise, as his nontraditional ways.  However as they talked, she noticed something was not quite right and his personality was very dull, even though he did have a nice minty scent to him.

Miss Sweetie decided to pay a visit to Mr. Bold’s table.  Right off the bat, Miss Sweetie and Mr. Bold hit it off.  Their personalities were a great compliment to each other, and she realized that she wasn’t really looking for someone to take care of, but someone to help take care of each other with.  With Mr. Bold’s personality, she knew she has found what she was looking for.  The two were inseparable after that night.

This story is about three rib recipes.  One using my traditional BBQ rub (Mr. Bold), which provides a bold BBQ flavor, with a kick of spiciness to it.  The second one (Miss Sweetie), was a recipe I put together to come up with a sweet rib recipe (for my wife). The final recipe, Mr. Promise, was a recipe I searched for online.  I was trying to find a use of dried Spearmint (the minty scent).

I knew Mr. Bold was going to come out of the smoker with a lot of flavor.  I had some small hopes for Miss Sweetie.  I was kind of interested in what Mr. Promise would end up like as it had a lot of good strong flavors with dried spearmint and Dijon mustard.

The results were Mr. Bold and Miss Promise had amazing flavors.  I definitely hit the sweet spot with Miss Sweetie, and this became my wife’s favorite rub recipe to date.  Not sure what happened to Mr. Promise, but it definitely seems the ingredients cancelled themselves out, and came out with a very dull flavor to them.

Ingredients:

• 3 racks of pork back ribs
• Jay’s BBQ Rub
• Miss. Sweetie Rub (below)
• Mr. Promise Wet Rub (below)

Instructions:

Prepare the pork back ribs by removing the membrane from the back side of the racks.  The simplest method to do this is to separate the membrane on one end with a butter knife or another dull type knife.  As you separate it grab hold of the part that is coming off and slowly pull across the rack of ribs to remove the entire membrane.  This takes a bit of getting use to, but once you do, you will be able to remove the membrane from a rack of ribs in under a minute.

Rub the first rack of ribs with Jay’s BBQ Rub, the second with the Miss. Sweetie Rub, and the final one with the Mr. Promise rub.  Wrap each one separately in aluminum foil and let sit for about 4 hours.

After 4 hours, place in smoker and smoke at 225 degrees for 4 – 5 hours.  The meat should be pull tender, should be able to separate the ribs by giving a slight tug between 2 bones.  Another good sign of them being done is the meat will start pulling back from the end of the bones.  Ribs should not be falling off the bone tender (usually sign of boiled ribs).

Miss Sweetie Rub:

• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar
• 1 tablespoon sweet French basil
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard seed
• 1 tablespoon seasoned salt
• 1 tablespoon sweet Hungarian Paprika

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Store in air tight container until ready to use.

Mr. Promise Wet Rub:

• 4 cloves Garlic
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon dried Mediterranean oregano
• 1 tablespoon dried spearmint
• 1 tablespoon apple cider
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh zest of lemon
• juice of 1/2 a lemon

Combine all ingredients into a blender and mix well.  Transfer to an air tight container and place in refrigerator you are ready to use.

For some reason I do not do to many burgers on the grill (heck, I haven’t even had a chance to light up the grill in a long time), even though it is very easy to get creative with the recipes.  This is a great example of a creative burger recipe that provides a lot of wonderful flavor.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds ground sirloin
• 2 tablespoons fennel seed, finely ground
• 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes, finely ground
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 red peppers
• Fresh blue cheese, crumbled
• Salt
• Cracked peppercorns
• Olive oil
• 6 4-inch square Focaccia rolls (I used a tomato basil focaccia roll)

Instructions:

Start off by preparing the grill for high direct heat.  Rinse the bell peppers with water and pat dry with a paper towel.  Place on the grill over direct heat.  Rotate the peppers about every 5 minutes, till the skin is well blistered.  Place in a bowl and cover with saran wrap.  Let sit in the bowl till they are cool enough to handle.

Prepare the burgers by combining the ground sirloin, fennel, red pepper flakes, balsamic vinegar, and red wine vinegar.  Make sure to mix the beef mixture thoroughly.  Form the mixture into six burger patties, and coat lightly with olive oil.  Sprinkle on some salt and the cracked peppercorns onto each burger patty.

Grill over direct heat until the desired doneness.

As the burgers grill, the peppers should be cool enough to handle.  Remove the stem and seeds from the peppers and peel off the skin.  At this time it should come off nice and easily.  Slice the peppers into 1 inch strips.

As the burgers are close to being done, slice the focaccia rolls in half and toast on the grill, cut side down.

Remove the burgers and focaccia rolls.  To make the burgers place the burger on the bottoms side of the focaccia roll, topped off with some of the sliced red peppers, and then the crumbled blue cheese.

Results:

These were absolutely amazing burgers!  For the vegetarian/non-beef eater, try portabellas that have been lightly seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then grilled.  I did this for my wife, and they were absolutely amazing to.

Standard Key Features:

Stainless Steel Hexagonal Grates – heavy duty grates that maximizes the contact between the meat and the metal that provides an even pattern of cooking and assists in giving the restaurant style sear marks.

High Quality Ceramic Briquettes - With the combination of the direct heat of the burners and these superior briquettes allows you to preheat you grill faster, while using less gas and provides heat more evenly.

Hot Surface Ignition – These grill use a top of the line ignition system that is more reliable then almost any other grill on the market.

Smoker Box (standard on some models) – My favorite feature of these grills, a smoker box that allows you to add smoke to increase the flavor of your food.

Hood Assist System – The doubled walled hoods provide better insulation and helps prevents exterior discoloration.  The hood assist system helps reduce the weight of these double walled hood, but using extensions springs.

Halogen Lights – Each grill comes with two halogen lights, which if you are like me that likes to grill at any time, can come very handy late at night.

Zone Dividers -  Each burner on a Twin Eagle Grill is separated by a zone divider so that you can effectively control heat for different foods across the grill.

Optional Features:

• Choice of built-in or free standing grills
• Infrared Rotisserie System
• Infrared Sear Zone
• Propane or Natural Gas

Interested in a high-end gas grill?  Then check these grills out at Twin Eagle Gas Grill(s).

I think I have formed a love affair with Italian foods on the grill.  Not sure what it is, the recipes are usually so simple, but yet full of flavor.  This dish is another Italian dish that is so simple, but provides a wonderful flavor and fragrance to some pork chops. 

Ingredients:

• 6 large bone-in pork chops, 3/4 inch thick
• 2 tablespoons of fennel seeds, grounded in a coffee/spice grinder
• 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes, grounded in a coffee/spice grinder
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tablespoon salt

Instructions

1. In a bowl, whisk together the olive oil, salt, fennel, and red pepper flakes
2. Rub the mixture onto all sides of the pork chops and let sit in a shallow dish for at least 30 minutes, preferably up to 60 minutes
3. Prepare the grill for medium indirect grill (make sure you can do direct for the first 4 minutes)
4. Place the pork chops on the grill over direct heat for 2 minutes per side
5. Move the pork chops to indirect heat till the pork has reached 160 degrees
6. Remove from the grill and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes

Results:

Favorite pork chop recipe now.  I originally discovered how wonderful fennel seed is by eating an Italian sausage at a small joint in Cedar Rapids, IA called the Flying Weenie.  They make their own Italian sausages and with each bite you get at least one fennel seed.  As soon as I discovered this dish there, I started dissecting the sausages to see what provide the amazing flavor they had, and I finally tasted a fennel seed that I pulled out from the Italian sausage (yes, I am a bit strange).  I have been addicted to it ever since.