Blog
6/4/2013
Site Information Last night the site was moved to a new server to hopefully improve performance. For now this means outside access to the site may be a little "funky" for the next few days. Also over the next day or two they will also be installing a new SSL certificate. In the long run these changes will be worth it. So please bear with us.
4/1/2013
Spring is here?So it's April first. Easter is behind us and the baseball season has begun. Would somebody please tell mother nature? Northeast Ohio has had a a relativity mild winter all things considered. The only constant has been the cold and there seems to be no sign of it letting up soon. We have only topped the 50 degree mark a couple of times so far and we still waking up to snow every other day or so.The weather doesn't stop us from grilling (with the exception of extreme wind) but it does put a dent in enjoying it. Nothing better then sitting outside grilling a nice steak with an adult beverage in hand b.s.ing with the neighbors across our back yards. I guess those days will be back soon but it's been a long cold winter and I want it over with now. First thing on my spring menu should be groundhog. That will show that lying little rodent!
3/25/2013
Easter ham on the Grill
This time of year we see a lot of activity of people purchasing items to grill their hams. So I think it is wise for me to point out a few things.
First of all if you purchase anything labeled ham from you local grocery store there is a 95% chance that it is pre-cooked. This is important because you are just reheating it not grilling it. This makes it difficult to add a grilled flavor to anything but the outer skin because the outer layer is already sealed pretty good. So if you want to heat the whole ham on your grill this is a great opportunity to use your rotisserie. Reheating a whole ham should be done over indirect heat so you can loosely follow the heating directions on the package.
If your ham is spiral sliced adding a smoke flavor will penetrate that outer skin when grilling so try adding a little apple wood smoke. As a final set in grilling a whole ham try covering the outer layer with honey and placing over direct heat to crystallize it. This will make a mess of your grill and it will need to be turned frequently but, I think it is well worth it
What we like to do is to get our ham sliced into those nice thick sandwich slices. Which I throw on the grill individually to heat up this adds those great grill marks and a little char. Then if you want a break from the traditional ham flavor slather them in barbecue sauce.
2/26/2013
Grilling Potato Skins
To begin we need to scoop out the interior of the potato, this can be done before cooking them or after. I decided to half bake the potatoes, just to make them easier to scoop out. Just a warning you can make them to soft if you try it this way and they will fall apart on you. Them we cut the spuds in half and scoop out the middles. Try to leave a substantial amount around the remaining shell or it will fall apart on you at some point.
Once crisp move back over indirect heat and fill with your filling of choice. For ours we used philly cheesesteak. Brilliant I know. Sprinkle with cheese and when the cheese melts they are done.
1/27/2013
Planning the Superbowl Menu
It is the week before the superbowl so it is time to start planning my menu. It seems like every year I end up writing the same article on smoking and grilling chicken wings. I want this year to be different but leaving the wings out seems like sacrilege to me. I think the main reason I write about the wings is that they are a labor of love. They take half the day to cook and everything else I do is easy by comparison.
So this year my plan is to experiment with potato skins of sorts. It may take some experimenting through the week to get the potato crispy without deep-frying it. Not to get into to much detail since I haven’t tried it yet but my initial plan is to bake the potato for a little while to soften it a bit. Then cut it in half scoop it out, coat it in butter then grill over direct heat to get it crispy. I really think it should work out well. What I put in them will be my little secret for now. Once it goes public it will be another one of my gifts to the food world and potato skins will never be the same!
The second thing I will cook is my garlic parmesan chicken thighs. This is something I have been cooking for the last 6 months or so and they always turn out great. I just have to take the pic’s and write it up.
As for the game I hope your team wins (providing it isn’t the old Browns) and have a blast with your friends. The game never seems to be as important as the party anyway.
01/02/2013
Happy New Year
Happy new year and thank you for helping make this another successful year here at 4thegrill. This marks the start of our 6th full year in business and over the holidays we received our 30,000th order. I am aware that we are light on merchandise right now. Some things arrived late last week and others are still on order, December wiped us out of a lot of stuff.
Around Christmas and Fathers day our business changes drastically, items we don’t sell a lot of sell and the items we sell everyday stop selling. We never really know what to expect until we are knee deep in it and it’s just to late in the season to do anything about it.
You may have noticed that we have begun our yearly site adjustments, items and sections moving around, the addition and deletion of items, and price changes. We are about 2 weeks into it and it will be going in all through January. If you can’t find what you were looking for please use the search box on the right.
12/28/2012
Holiday Shipping Update
It appears that both Fedex and USPS will be picking up on new years eve so any order placed over the weekend will leave on Monday 12/31 as usual.
12/26/2012
Holiday Shipping Update
We are under a blizzard warning that is supposed to be rolling in here around noon. Because of that Anything order today will not leave until 12/27. Orders placed over the holiday and weekend will get out this morning.
12/21/2012
Holiday Shipping Update
Our shipments have left for the day. Fedex shipping will resume on 12/26. Anything shipping USPS will ship on 12/24. Merry Christmas.
12/19/2012
Holiday Shipping Update
At this point most customers will need to select the Fedex next Day shipping option to get your order by Friday. The only exception would be for those people in Ohio or on the border of it.
12/15/2012
Holiday Shipping Notes
A few notes as to holiday shipping:
We are still shipping orders placed before noon the same day
We attempt to select a shipping method where you will get your order in time without us losing money on it
If you are concerned Fedex ground will still make it anywhere in the lower 48 by Friday.
If the Mayans were right it all will not matter anyway.
11/1/2012
One way to handle left overs When we have left over chicken one of the things that I like to do is grill up some chicken casadias. They are simple and only take a few minutes each to cook.
All you really need is: tortilla or soft taco shells, chicken and cheese. For this I used left over beer can chicken, a shredded Mexican cheese mix, and added some black bean salsa as well. You could add anything you like tomatoes and onions come to mind but I like to keep things simple.
Start by shredding or cutting up your chicken it just can't be to thick. You will now need to get a tray or cooking sheet and load up everything you will need and take it out to your grill. You will be assembling them right on the grill grates. Light one side of your grill about medium heat or if using charcoal pour the hot coals to one side.
These will go fairly quickly so you will have to work fast. Place the first shell over the heat for a minute or so (we are just heating up the inside a bit) then flip it over onto the cool side and place the next shell over the heat. Now pile on your chicken cheese and anything else you are putting in your casadia. Then take the second shell and place the hot side down on top of the first shell and toppings. Then slide the casadia back onto the heat, pull don’t push and hold the top if it begins to move. The longer the spatula blade is here the better off you will be while moving them around. If you have the room on your grilling surface you can begin to heat up the next shell now as well. Don't let it sit for too long in one place if the cheese doesn't begin to melt right away, spin it or slide it around. Once you see the cheese beginning to melt it can be turned over. Press the top down with your spatula before turning and it should stay together fine. When it is done just slide it off of but next to the heat and stack them up until you are finished.
As you can see this is real easy to do just a lot of assembly mainly but the payoff is well worth it. These go so fast I don't close the hood of the grill at all, just let the flames do the work.
10/23/2012
Our Silly Season
This is our strangest time of year. Obviously the change in weather slows our sales drastically. So we stop buying all but our best selling products for a few months, until the holiday season rolls around. The manufactures take advantage of this by tempting us with new products for next year and changing their prices.
One of the most interesting products I have seen so far is a Himalayan salt block or plate. I have seen this on TV before (triple D I think) but it was never anything I thought would become mainstream. If you are unfamiliar with it, more or less it is a block of salt that you heat up then you cook on its hot surface. Unique idea, which I am sure, will produce some very different flavored foods.
The problem we have with it is after doing a little research on this product we have learned if handled improperly the block could explode. So we do not want any part of it.
10/1/2012
Great Food Truck Race
I don't often write about food shows on TV for a couple of reasons. First, there are just so many of them. Secondly, most shows seem to involve way to many ingredients for my liking. I like watching shows like triple D and the Great Food Truck Race just to get a ballpark idea on new things to cook. Then I can take that information and twist it my own way.
One thing that really bothers me about the Great Food Truck Race are the sheer amount of people lining up for their food. Do these people not watch his show at all? What I mean by that is, they could be standing in line for an hour, then the phone rings and the trucks have to shut down. Or worse yet go vegan for the rest of the day.
Common sense should tell you to avoid being put into a bad situation like that. I guess common sense has no place when there is an off chance to see yourself on TV for a split second.
9/18/2012
The Great Rib Debate. Fall off the Bone Vs. Competition Style:
I am really not sure if it’s a matter of personal preference, regional or if the TV chefs just like to tell people that they are doing things wrong. My guess is it’s the latter. But I for one am sick and tired of seeing the chefs on TV telling us that fall off the bone ribs are cooked wrong. Seriously have you ever had a steak so tender that just melts in your mouth? I guess you would send it back because it is over cooked. Yeah I didn’t think so.
I have had award winning competition style ribs, ribs in good restaurants, ribs off of the back of trailers in parking lots and none of them have even come close to the fall off the bone ribs we make at home.
Basically there is a simple difference in the cooking technique between the two styles. (I have gone in depth on the various cooking methods for ribs here.) To achieve the fall off the bone type ribs liquid is introduced to the cooking process to steam them. Barbecue teams will wrap their ribs in tinfoil with apple juice, a process referred to as the Texas crutch, then they pull them out of the foil to dry them out so that they get chewy. At home you may precook them in an oven before putting them onto your grill.
Here is the point that I think that really makes a difference at home. You take you ribs put them on the grill over indirect heat and sauce them. This is also a good time to add the smoke if you like that flavor as well. Let that sauce cook in slowly while heating the ribs. At the end if you like a little crunch put them over the flame and let that sugar from the sauce caramelize.
In competition Q or at a restaurant the ribs are either dunked in sauce or it is brushed on at the last minute. So there is no sauce penetration into the meat.
I would be glad to prove to any of you TV chefs how much better fall off the bone ribs are. Just give me a call and I will blow your mind!
9/11/2012
8/23/2012
Why use a rotisserie basket?:
So yesterday I wanted to grill one of our infamous barbecue turkey breasts but I still had to mow the lawn, so I wouldn’t have time to watch it. It dawned on me that I could just set up the rotisserie and stick it in a flat basket.
I used to dread the cleanup of the rotisserie baskets but now with the new stainless rotisserie baskets cleanup is a breeze. Just use your grill brush or an SOS pad and it’s clean in seconds.
After setting everything up and letting it run a few minutes I began to mow my lawn. It’s a small yard and takes about a half an hour to 45 minutes. When it was done I went to the grill and the pictures shown are what I found. Not only picture perfect it was fully cooked in 20 minutes less then it normally takes. I guess I will be using my rotisserie a lot more often from here on out!
8/13/2012
More on Shish Kabobs:
Shish kebabs are the one of the few things we continue to cook the traditional way even when we know there is a better way to do it. By this I mean that when we make up the skewers is goes: peppers, onion, meat repeat. The suggested way to cook them is to skewer each different item individually since they all cook at a different rate.
We attempted the correct way once and de-skewered them into a bowl for serving but it just wasn’t the same. The flavors didn’t blend the way they do when cooked together on the skewer.
Kabobs can be a lot of things the image shown were served at a friends house this summer. While not very traditional looking they were delicious. I have made Italian sausage kabobs before but they used kielbasa and the traditional peppers and onions with no sauce. We sauce ours at the end using traditional barbecue sauce and we think it adds a little something, especially to the peppers and onions.
So have a little fun with your kabobs you never know what you will come up with.
7/30/2012
Shish Kabobs:
Shish kebabs can get very complicated. Not the food so much as the words used.
Shish is the word that refers to the skewer used and is middle eastern in origin. However kebab or kabob (the spelling variations are used in different parts of the world. So either spelling would be correct) means grilled meat. So you can have kabobs without the shish but not shish without the kabobs.
If you think about it you now realize why sometimes things on a skewer are referred to as skewers and not just shish. Because if its not meat of some kind on that stick it is just a skewer.
7/14/2012
Over the past week we have received the 100% 304 stainless steel spit rods, and spit forks for your rotisserie and we also added stainless steel rotisserie kits.
Some inherent befits to using stainless parts for your rotisserie are the ease of cleanup, you can use SOS pads or through the parts into the dishwasher if you want. Stainless is also much tougher than regular steel it will last you a lifetime. The only real drawback is the fact that it’s more expensive then the chrome plated counterpart.
6/25/2012
This video is pretty entertaining I especially like the bbq sauce fountain and the "I gotta a guy" comment.
5/13/2012
Review Onion Seasoning Grill Brush:
When we see a product this off the wall we have to try it out. My first reaction to the Mr. Bar-B-Q Onion Seasoning Grill Brush was this could be the oddest grill tool we have ever seen but then again it just could be crazy enough to work.
The tool is simple a plastic handle on a stainless steel shaft with a cup on the end. The cup has spikes that look like small nails that hold the onion in place. Click Here to read the full review
4/9/2012
How to Grill Crab Legs:
Last night I took to opportunity to grill some Snow Crab Legs, a first for me. Every time I grill something new I research it on the Internet first and as usual a lot of the information I found was wrong. So here is our take on how to grill crab legs.
The first thing you need to know about the frozen crab legs you purchase is that they are most likely already cooked. The way to know for sure is the red color. If they are red they are fully cooked and you are just heating them up.
Now the question is to defrost or not defrost? To defrost crab legs first rinse them in cold water then either: place in you refrigerator for at least 24 hours or a pot of cold water for 4 to 6 hours.
The blog has gotten so out of control we had to start archiving the older posts.