Sunday, June 8, 2008

BBQ 5 - Epilogue

Well, the meat was overcooked. So, I sliced it as thinly as I could manage, against the grain, chopped it into small pieces, and dosed it with a good store-bought BBQ sauce. I'll be serving it on toasted onion buns tonight, as a sloppy Joe-type sandwich.

I tried a few test pieces as I was chopping, and it's a bit chewy, for sure, but the flavor isn't bad. Hopefully it will pass muster with The Mister.

I should probably have had the meat thermometer out sooner. Even so, the excess of coals doomed me. Next time, I'll make sure to use fewer coals, which should make a difference. Live and learn. Such are the perils of semi-live blogging.

I did, however, have a pretty cool improv flash of brilliance after I took the meat off the grill. There was still a ton of heat left, so I cooked a peach pie! On the grill!

I spread the coals out into one layer, instead of being on one side. I tightly wrapped the pie in aluminum foil, making sure none of the edges were peeking. I also put the pie on top of a heavy baking sheet, to help diffuse the heat coming up from the bottom of the coals. Since this was a frozen pie, I let it cook for about 2 hours.

It came out pretty well. We got a tornado-producing thunderstorm halfway through the cooking time, so I didn't have a chance to uncover the pie to let it brown properly. So the top crust got a tad doughy. The bottom crust was pretty dark, though--not quite to burnt stage, but more summer tan brown then golden brown.

For the future, I'd probably leave out the bottom crust, and just do a pie crust or cobbler topping. Since this was a pre-made pie, I didn't have much choice in the matter.

This method is definitely something I'll try to perfect, and work on for the future. I was able to cook a pie without having to heat up my kichen, and when the weather's as hot as it has been this week, that's worth a lot. Look for some more blog posts about doing pie on a grill later this summer.

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