Chef Paul’s "Cookin' with Passion" Tip of the Week

Well the grilling season is upon us once again.  Old man winter has left finally.  Took a while to leave up here in the Northeast, but he’s finally gone. Thank goodness.  Everyone is pulling out the grills, taking the covers off, and they’re looking at the grill saying “what am I going to do with this?”  Well, first thing you need to do is to clean that grate, and the easiest thing to do is to scrape that down as best you can till you see that metal.  Don’t leave it like that.  Take some oil – 90% vegetable oil and 10% olive oil – blend it together, put it on a paper towel and rub it on.  You’ll be set for the season. 

One of the most common problems most people run across is everything sticks to the grill.  The reason is that the grill is never hot enough.  Always get the grill as hot as you can get it before you put your steak on there, your fish on there, your vegetables on there – anything that you’d like.

The next thing is what to put on the grill.  Obviously if you want to use a fish, you want to have a thick muscle fish which has some density to it like a swordfish, or even a salmon; but not a soft flesh fish like a soul, a flounder, a dab or a red snapper.  Stick to the thick flesh fish.

Let’s talk about brining.  Brining is a very old way of preserving meats.  It’s a simple salt and sugar mixture.  Nowadays, everyone and their mother has these special marinades that they use.  If you go to the store to buy a marinade and you look at the price, you just want to fall over.  $3 $4, $5, $6 for 5 or 6 ounces of these marinades – when you can make a marinade very inexpensively at home with a simple salt, sugar and water combination.

I’ll give you a quick recipe for that.  It’s ½ cup salt, ½ cup sugar and 9 cups of water.  You put 2 tablespoons of cracked black pepper in there.  Peppercorns crush very easily.  Put 2 tablespoons of that into your mix and put your meat in there.  Depending on how thick your cut of meat is will determine how long you leave it in.  As an example, for a pork tenderloin, which is a very soft flesh meat, you can leave that in for 3 hours, then take it out and pat it dry.  Put it on your grill and you’re all set to go.  Just remember to pat that brine off your meat.  The reason is that the salt will collect on the outside of the meat and will turn very, very salty.  When the water evaporates from the brine it will leave a residue on the outside of the meat, so you just want to take the meat out of the brine, pat it down with some paper towels and place the meat right on your seasoned grill.

Vegetables are great on the grill.  If you take a little Montreal steak seasoning and a little olive oil, put that on a plate together and mix it up.  Then roll your corn on the cob in it or roll your asparagus or roll whole pieces of romaine.  If you take a whole romaine and cut it down into quarters, just lightly brush that oil on with the seasonings and put it on the grill, that makes a great salad.  Grilled salads – it’s an old concept but it’s really starting to come back.  Put some pieces of garlic bread on the grill itself, grill that with your Caesar salad with your romaine, you’ll have an awesome salad for summertime cooking – just great!

And even fruit! Take pineapple, clean the outside of the pineapple, slice it straight down about an inch and a half thick and brush the sides with some olive oil.  Not too much oil, but just a little bit on each side and then sprinkle some Cajun seasoning on that and put that on the grill.  You’ll have a little bit of the hot and you’ll have a little bit of the sweet coming out from the sugar pineapples that are available now.  Absolutely magnificent.  Very high content of natural sugars in these pineapples.  Hot and sweet together – it’s just an awesome combination.

These are just a few grilling tips to get you started and kick off the grilling season.  We’ll be back with more another time.

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