Looking for a pork chop that has a kick to it?  These chops have a very nice kick to them, but plenty of other flavor.  Might be a bit spicy for some, but just cutback on the cayenne pepper and it will tone it done a bit.

Ingredients:

• 2 bone-in thick pork chops
• Olive Oil
• 1 tablespoon Spanish paprika
• 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1 teaspoon rubbed sage
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic

Instructions:

1. Prepare the grill for medium to medium-high direct grilling.
2. Combine all spices together in a bowl and mix well.
3. Put a light coat of olive oil on both sides of the pork chops.
4. Apply dry rub to pork chops.
5. Grill over direct heat for about 8 minutes, flipping half way.

Agave nectar is a great substitute to using honey or other liquid sugars.  The lighter varieties have a more neutral flavor to honey, which tends for it make a perfect ingredient that will not mask more delicate flavored ingredients.  Ever have that bottle of honey that crystallized over time? You will not have that with agave nectar as it has a longer shelf life and will not crystallize in the bottle.  In this recipe the agave nectar brings a nice sweet flavor that goes well with the pork chops.

Quinoa is another ingredient that I have recently discovered and fell in love with.  It is a grain-like crop that is grown for its edible seeds, which provides a nice nutty flavor.  Quinoa originated in South America.  The Incas believed the Quinoa crop to be sacred and fed it to warriors as it was believed that it was a good source of energy.  It is actually a rich and balanced source of nutrients with a lot of protein, fiber, and contains all the essential amino acids.  It is a very versatile food as it can be used in place of cereal, made into salads (another popular salad is a quinoa tabouleh), or even into a vegetarian burger patty.  Here I mixed it in with some carrots, cilantro, grilled corn, and black beans.

Pork Chop Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup Agave Nectar
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon sweet French basil
• Olive Oil
• Coarse salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 thick bone-in pork chops

Pork Chop Instructions:

1. Prepare the grill for medium heat direct grilling.
2. Prepare the Agave Lime Glaze by mixing together the Agave Nectar, lime juice, cayenne pepper, and basil in a bowl and set aside.
3. Prepare the pork chops by coating with a light coat of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
4. Place pork chops on grill over direct heat.
5. After 5 minutes flip pork chops and brush glaze on grilled side of chop.
6. When getting close to being done, flip pork chops again and apply glaze to other side.
7. Finish grilling pork chops till juice run clear.

Quinoa Salad Ingredients:

• Cooked quinoa as described by package for 1 cup uncooked
• 3 ears corn, grilled and removed from ear
• 2 cups prepared black beans
• 1 cup cilantro, roughly chopped
• 1/2 medium sized red onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Juice of 2 limes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Quinoa Salad Instructions:

1. In a small bowl make the lime vinaigrette, combine the olive oil, lime juice, garlic and kosher salt, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and mix well.
3. Toss the salad with the vinaigrette and serve with pork chops.

Here is my latest MOINK ball creation (nice and simple like it should be):

• 10 frozen all beef meatballs
• 5 slices of bacon cut in half
• Cracked pepper and garlic glaze
• BBQ Rub
• Toothpicks

Instructions:

• Wrap each meatball with a half a slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick and secure with a toothpick
• Season the MOINK balls with the BBQ Rub
• Grill/smoke until until bacon is about crispy enough
• Apply glaze to the MOINK balls
• Remove from grill and serve

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.

Yesterday at work we had our annual chili cook off.  This year I tried to make something a little more unique than the other contestants, which it seemed like majority of the candidates tried to do the same thing.  We had recipes that ranged from your traditional chili, pumpkin spice, chili, cranberry chili, vegetarian chilies, and then I ended up with a pork chile verde.  In the past I tried to come up with recipes that were outside my taste profile, so my goal was to use ingredients that I like to use with my grilling.  This is a pretty involved recipe, that also introduced my little friend, Mr. Peno, Jala Peno (a stuffed jalapeno that is).

The first stage of the recipe is to make the chile verde, the ingredients needed are:

• 2 to 2 1/2 pounds tomatillos
• 1 bunch cilantro, clean and roughly chopped
• 2 poblano peppers
• 2 jalapenos, seeds and membranes removed
• 10 garlic cloves, unpeeled

Instructions:

1. Remove the husks from the tomatillos and rinse well.
2. Cut the tomatillos in half, and place cut side down on a foil-lined baking sheet
3. Take the unpeeled garlic cloves to the baking sheet
4. Broil the tomatillos and garlic fro about 7 – 10 minutes, or until the tomatillos start to slightly blacken.
5. Remove from broiler and let cool off.
6. Roast the poblano peppers over an open fire until the skins start to blacken.  You can use the broiler for this step too, as I did this time due to the weather outside.
7. Place the poblano peppers in a bag and let rest for about 10 minutes.
8. After 10 minutes, remove the poblano peppers from the bag, and remove the outer skin of the peppers.
9. Place the tomatillos, cilantro, poblanos, jalapenos, and garlic cloves (squeeze from peel) into a food processor/blender and blend until are ingredients are finely chopped and mix.

To prepare the pork, you will need:

• 5 – 6 pounds pork shoulder (can use pork steaks, as the pre-sliced pork shoulder is easier to handle)
• 2 tablespoons whole Mexican oregano, crushed
• 2 tablespoons dried cilantro
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin (buy whole, and ground yourself).
• 3 tablespoons chili powder (Make your own: Chile Powder Recipe)
• 2 tablespoons granulated onion powder
• 2 tablespoons granulated garlic
• 1 tablespoon lime salt
• 3 tablespoons whole annatto seeds, finely ground (available at Mexican grocery stores and spice stores, such as Penzeys.)
• Olive oil

Instructions:

1. Combine all the dry spices and mix well.
2. Cut the pork shoulder into about 1 – 1 1/2 inch cubes
3. Heat up a skillet with olive oil
4. Take a little bit of the cubed pork and season it and place in the skillet (work with small batches at a time in the skillet) to brown on each side of the pork, remove and place on a plate. Continue with rest of the pork till it is all lightly browned, added more olive oil as needed.

To combine everything into the chili you will need:

• 2 sweet yellow onions, chopped
• 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 4 to 5 cups chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons dried cilantro
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 tablespoon lime salt
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• Juice of 2 limes

Instructions:

1. Place the chopped onions into the same skillet as you cooked the pork (keep about 2 tablespoons of the oil/grease/spice mixture left behind in it) and sauté the onions until soft, about 7 minutes.  Make sure to constantly stir around.
2. Add the chile verde, pork, sautéed onions to a large soup pot.
3. Add enough chicken stock to fully cover the pork inside the pot.
4. Add in the dried cilantro, ground cloves, lime salt, and chili powder, and the lime juice.
5. Bring pot to a boil, and reduce down to a light simmer and cook uncovered for 2 to 2 1/2 hours (The pork should be extremely tender).

Optional, garnishments:

• Grilled Stuffed Jalapenos (the Mr. Peno, Jala Peno of the recipe)
• Lime Wedges
• Finely chopped cilantro
• Freshly made corn tortilla chips/strips (place oilve oil on both sides of corn tortillas, slice tortillas, bake at 450 for about 6 minutes.

To serve the chili, I prepared the bowls by:

• Placing desired amount of chili in the bowl
• Place a lime wedge on the side
• Attached the stuffed jalapenos to the lime wedges with the toothpick holding the bacon on the stuffed jalapeno
• Place a sprig of cilantro into the top the stuffed jalapno (Mr. Peno’s umbrella)
• Place a little bit of chopped cilantro in the center of the bowl
• Place freshly backed corn tortilla strips around the chopped cilantro
• Place to larger pieces of freshly backed corn tortillas on the side of the bowl.

This chili took the most unique/decorative category of the chili competition, but my unbiased opinion, it was the best overall chili there (ok, must be biased, since I didn’t get a chance to try others with all the prep work I did).  This is definitely one of the best and unique chilies that I have eaten.

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.

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoon whole Mexican Oregano, crushed
• 2 teaspoon dried cilantro
• 2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 3 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon granulated onion powder
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1 teaspoon lime salt
• 3 teaspoon smokey sweet pepper seasoning
• Chicken breasts
• Pork steak
• Tomatoes, diced
• Cilantro, chopped
• A good Mexican cheese
• Lettuce
• Guacamole
• Sour Cream
• White corn tortillas, warmed up

Instructions:

1. Make the rub by mixing the first 8 ingredients together in a bowl
2. Rub the spice mixture into the chicken breasts and pork steaks
3. Prepare the grill for medium direct grilling.
4. Place the chicken and pork steaks on the grill, and grill till completely cooked, flipping the meat once about half way through cooking.
5. Remove the meat from the grill and dice up the chicken and pork, and place in separate bowls.
6. Place the remaining ingredients into separate bowls
7. Let people form their own tacos.

Don’t worry, this is a legal way of smoking a fatty.  A smoked fatty is just a sausage log that is smoked, basically the bacon explosion without the bacon.  There are many ways to smoked a BBQ fatty, the simplest is to just buy a sausage log, such as Jimmy Dean or Bob Evans sausage, toss it on the grill or smoker, and cook till done.  You can get more elaborate and mix sausage with a bunch of other ingredients and form back into a sausage log.  The key to creating a smoked fatty is to make the use of smoke and cooking it at a low temperature that is around 225 to 250 degrees until you get an internal temperature of around 160 degrees.  For mine I used a combination of mild and hot Italian sausage mixed with a bunch of garlic and diced red onions and it was absolutely fabulous.

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces mild Italian sausage
• 12 ounces hot Italian sausage
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 4 cloves garlic diced
• Favorite BBQ Rub, optional (Mine)
• BBQ Sauce, optional
• Favorite smoking wood (I used cherry this time)

Instructions:

1. Combined the sausage, red onion, a garlic and mix well
2. Form into a sausage log
3. Coat with BBQ rub
4. Prepare the grill/smoker for indirect heat at a temperature around 225 to 250 degrees
5. Place in grill or smoker and cooking until the internal temperature of around 160 is reached
6. Remove from grill
7. Coat with BBQ sauce (optional)
8. Wrap in aluminum foil and let sit for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour
9. Slice and serve

Results:

This is a very simple, but definitely is great eating.  You can slice and serve by itself or do what I like, place on a biscuit with a a couple pieces of bacon and some BBQ sauce.  You can even add a fried egg and have BBQ for breakfast.

This is something I have been wanting to grill up for a while now, and finally had the chance, a grilled flatbread pizza with prosciutto, tomatoes, onion, basil, and freshly shredded asiago cheese.  Combine all those with the great smoky flavor from the grill, and you get one awesome pizza.

Ingredients:

• 1 Flatbread, I used a cilantro and thyme flatbread
• Olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Roma tomato, sliced
• 1/8 cup sliced red onion
• 8 leaves fresh basil
• 4 slices prosciutto, sliced into 1/4 inch squares
• 1/4 cup shredded asiago cheese

Instructions:

• Prepare the grill for medium direct and indirect grilling
• Brush olive oil on both sides of the flatbread
• Grill over direct heat for about 2 minutes per side, should get crispy
• Remove from grill
• Add the ingredients in the following order: Garlic, 1/2 of the cheese, prosciutto, onion, sliced tomatoes, basil, and the second 1/2 of the cheese
• Grill indirectly until all the cheese is melted

Results:

This is a great dish for an appetizer or a meal by itself.  And is a great way to cook pizza during those hot summer days, when you do not want to turn on the oven.

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.