What about a barbecue side dish to liven up your meal?

As things go, I wanted to continue with doing something different, this time a creamy potato salad with bacon side dish for your barbeque. Something I’m sure you, your friends and family will really enjoy the next time they come around.

For this dish, I gather a few pounds of small red new potatoes, a few slices of bacon, quarter cup sour cream, wine vinegar, thinly sliced stalks celery, fresh flat-leaf parsley, fresh tarragon, mayonnaise, salt and black pepper. I let the potatoes boil in a little water and add a teaspoonful salt. At this junction, reduce the heat, allow potatoes to simmer till they are tender in about 18 minutes. Once ready, drain and run under cold water to cool and cut the potatoes into small pieces. Set the potatoes aside and cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp, paper towel bacon when ready and allow it to break into smaller pieces. Get a large bowl, mix and whisk mayonnaise, sour cream, vinegar, pinch of salt and pepper. Throw in the potatoes add celery and toss to mix it all up. When well mixed, fold the potato mixture in bacon, tarragon and parsley. The best thing about this dish is that it is so simple, yet it has a big impact on the bbq experience. I do enjoy the potato side dish recipes at allrecipes.com.au if you’re feeling adventurous and want something to make your bbq one never to forget.

I hope this recipe works out great in bringing the best flavors from your meat. Surprise your friends and tell them you will whip up something for them in say, 30 minutes, they will be licking their folks, asking for more!

Got a few more ideas of your own on livening up bbq? I’ld love to hear them.

“Australian BBQ for Dummies”

Some mates of my hubby arrived from both England and the US.  I’m not sure if these were mates from his college years or not, but regardless I could quickly see they thought a barbie was something my daughter would play with! Ha!

So in case anyone  out there are a bit amused by the outsiders coming in, maybe they can read this prior to arrival.  I call it “Australian BBQ for Dummies.” (Hubby loved the name)

Where you guys here “shrimp on the barbie” in movies, it’s really us Aussies just doing what we love to do best, using what we have available.  It’s our way of grilling, but it’s most certainly a barbie! (or barbecue)

It’s also a social affair and as engrained in our culture as anything I suppose.   It’s not implied to bring alcohol to our barbies, as they are often in public places with children. So unless you are certain it’s an adult only barbie, and you’ll know, juices, water, or anything refreshing is ideal to bring with you or expect to being served.

Yes, our barbies are something to see and experience, and if visiting…please do your research so you don’t show up with a barbie doll for someone’s daughter.

A few idea’s for something different.

I thought I would share some new or fairly new ideas for the barbecue this summer, just to start getting in the mood sort off. Feel free to send in your suggestions or links.

Grilled vegetable salad – As the coals start to heat up toss the veggies onto the grill. For this use small onion, red peppers, in fact any colour pepper, including some chilies if you want a hot spicy salad. Alongside aubergine, tomatoes, garlic. As the outer skins blacken remove from grill and remove skin. I use plastic gloves and have the veggies on newspaper so I can throw the charcoal skin away. Roughly chop the veggies up, place in a bowl. All you need to do with garlic is squeeze the soft part out of the skins directly into bowl. Add olive oil salt and pepper and a good amount of fresh squeezed lemon juice. Delicious. This can be done just as well at a campfire as at home. Another favourite BBQ vegetables recipe of mine can be found on Food.com added by ‘cooking pompom’

Colourful veggies for the BBQ

Sausage surprise burgers: Instead of making sausages shape the meat into a burger shape, make a pocket in the middle and put in some chili relish ( or any relish I like pomegranate lime relish) or your favourite cheese, I like feta when I am doing this but choices endless. It has to be something that only needs warming or melting not cooking. BBQ as normal and enjoy, great fun when folk don’t know about the surprise in the middle. You can do this with any burger but I prefer sausage meat as it cooks quicker.

Maple and Lime-Flavoured Cucumber and Peach Relish

Hope this is starting to get you into BBQ mode, more to come next week.

A great barbecue sauce

A good barbecue requires a good sauce. Everyone who makes a great barbecue invariable makes a yummy sauce. It is an essential ingredient and is the main part of the smoked chicken whole, or chicken ribs. Most of the sauces that exist today are a result of some astute experimenting by the cook. Here is one I experimented with and it came out with flying colors.

The Ingredients – 100 grams yellow mustard, 50 grams butter, cumin seeds 5 grams, garlic paste, ginger paste, yogurt 50 grams,salt 10 grams,sugar 5 grams.

The Process – The yellow mustard should be put in water 3 hours before making preparation. Then it should be made into paste in a mixer. Take a non-stick frying pan and put butter in it. Heat till the butter melts. Heat the melted butter for a couple of minutes. Then add cumin seeds, and put the garlic paste with ginger paste. Cook for a couple of minutes. Add the mustard paste and cook on sim flame for 5 minutes.The sauce will have a deep yellow color. Add yogurt to make the color light yellow. Keep on cooking for 5 more minutes after adding salt and sugar to the sauce.

Cool down the sauce which will be light-yellow in color. You can store it in the refrigerator and take it with you for the next barbecue picnic. I tell you your smoked chicken will rock with this amazing sauce.

The Variations – If you want a more tangy sauce, you can double the mustard quantity. If you want a more buttery taste double the butter and yogurt quantity.

 

Fish Barbecue

Fish Barbecue

Fish cooks best over open fire. Experienced cooks will tell you that fish tastes best when cooked over campfire.

But cooking fish is different from cooking other things. A lot of care needs to be taken.

Preparing for barbecue:

• Grill gate cleaning – With its delicate skin cleaning of the grill becomes a necessity.If not done properly the fish can fall apart very quickly.Start by cleaning the sticky stuff with wire brush and end with wiping it clean with tissue paper.
• Lubricate the grill – The grill should be lubricated properly to avoid sticking. Use a tissue towel to lubricate the grill carefully. It will save your fish.
• Grill heating – Before starting to cook heat the grill to high temperature. Fish will stick to warm grill. So it is necessary to make the grill reach higher temperatures.

Barbecuing the fish 

• Choose the right fish – The fish which is fresh will cook best on the barbecue.

• Removing scales – The scales of the fish should be removed uniformly for it to cook evenly.
• Making slashes on skin – This is required to open up the fish for proper cooking. The slashes are to be used to insert spices for a better flavour.
• Prepare the fish with oil and spice – Fish cooks best when prepared beforehand by applying oil and spices. The fish meat absorbs spices very easily.
• Cook both sides – Cooking fish requires exposing it to heat on both sides up to five minutes. Over exposing can ruin the taste.

Barbecued fish is succulent and tastes great. Just a bit careful and the fish barbecue will beat all others.

 

Cooking the best kebabs

Now that I’ve bought a brand new BBQ station, thanks to Ferratum.com.au and it’s very kind policy, I’ve been trying out a number of exotic recipes. Grilled kebabs are probably one of the finest dishes ever to be created. Kebabs are essentially meat on a stick. You can use any kind of meat you want and the flavouring and seasoning possibilities are endless. They are quite easy to cook compared to many other kinds of barbecued meats as well.

However, kebabs have to be cooked right in order for them to be tasty- othewise they become really chewy and dry. You can prevent this from happening by following a few tips. First of all, when I said you can use almost any meat, I meant that there are a number of animal options. However, not all parts of the animals are suitable for making kebabs. Tender meats such as pork shoulder, chicken thigh, sirloin tip, etc. make excellent kebab options.

Secondly, while cutting the meat into cubes, make sure that the cubes are not too small. This way, the meat will get cooked all the way through, but won’t become dry. Adding some marinade to your kebab will also lend it a lot of flavour (depending on the kind of marinade, you might have to marinate it overnight, so be prepared)!

To take your kebab game to the next level, roast some peppers, onions, or mushrooms and add them to the skewer along with the meat!

A Vegetarian Challenge

BBQ Snapper

I got challenged this week to make a vegetarian barbie for the weekend. All vegetarian! Now I have done the odd kebab with whatever veggies I had and some pretty neat marinades but they have been side dishes really. So a challenge what can you do? I decided on an Asian theme and decided on cooking a whole fish. Sent hubby to market and he came back with a lovely snapper. I went online and researched some ideas and made a combination of this recipe, to which I added ginger and this one from which I used the sauce. It was delicious, certainly something we will be making again. I actually found that the way he wrapped the fish in the video, with far more care than I normally do, worked very well.

Three Bean Salad

Along with the fish I made a three bean salad. I used canned kidney, butter and soya beans. I added chopped scallions and the dressing was peanut oil, crushed garlic, grated ginger, soya sauce and lime juice. You could play around with the bean mix, one of my guests suggested I use green beans and she suggested to use freshly cooked rather than canned and to warm the other beans from tins and to add the dressings whilst warm. I actually tried this a few days later as I was intrigued to see if there would be a difference. There was, the uptake of the dressing is much better, will do it this way from now on.
I also, feeling clever, decided to make a desert on the barbie, other than our normal fruit kebabs. I sliced a banana lengthwise and filled it with a mixture of white and dark chocolate, I also added a few of the small marshmallows. Wrapped in foil and on it went. I did this on the dying ember and left them on for about 10mins. Served them with some ice cream and they went down a treat.

Delicious with ice cream…

Christmas BBQ

Well, I couldn’t not do a mention on Christmas could I! Seeing as we’re confessed BBQ addicts, it’s natural that for the last few years we’ve done our Christmas meal on the barbie. I used to fuss about the traditional roast, slaving in the kitchen on a hot day, while everyone else was outside relaxing – not anymore, doing the meal on the BBQ means I get to join in, most things can be pre-prepared leaving me outside with my family, and the tidying up and mess is so much less.

With Christmas we still try to make it a special meal – we’ll go down to the fish market the day before and stock up on luxuries including the fattest prawns to make this delicious starter. We get the best cuts of meat suitable for BBQing, marinated the day before, and often our butcher may have some special sausages themed for the holidays, a little bit fancier than your average snag. To cater for any vegetarians in the throng (and yes even veggies like a BBQ) we’ll marinate some vegetables for skewers – choose luxury ingredients like asparagus to make it special, and marinate in some grated ginger, lime juice, coriander and olive oil – delicious, or you can try a variation like this recipe I saw. I know other people talk about doing turkeys, etc on the BBQ but for me that’s for inside in winter – I like real meaty flavours on the grill, that feeling of wood smoked flavour.

Whatever you’re doing enjoy, and be safe..

Sausage Sizzle

Well I am a busy bee at the moment getting ready for our Sausage sizzle on the 29th November. Its the Victoria State Election day and I am helping out our local scouts group. I have been collecting donations and organising some of the mums on board to get sauces and bread – no good having slabs without ketchup eh? Not doing to bad, looking like we are online to meet the quota we were given.The idea behind all of this is, “The message is “Get together with your community and enjoy a sausage on election day – a great Australian tradition”. The campaign is being promoted by Snagvotes who have been supporting this since 2010.  I invited a few friends round to the house the other night for a barbie – what else and drummed up some support for making sausages.  Another friend has found a butcher to donate some meat. We decided the best way was to have a group “making sausages night” so thats planned for next week end. Its all go but must say really enjoy it and the boys well as you know any excuse for a barbie is ok with them.

Not got a recipe for you this post but have a look at this video from the Sausage King Shane Mundy. Learn technique from a master.

barbies and sausages

Now as I mentioned before my husband, Joe, thinks that it is the way that sausages are cooked that make them special so here is a few of his tips:

• Pre heat the grill but not high heat. Throw your sausages onto a hot grill and they will burst.
• Wipe the grill with some oil prior to putting the sausages on.
• Don’t prick or prod the sausages – keep the juices and flavor in.
• Aim to cook slow turning regularly but not even few seconds.
• Have a thermometer and check the internal temp is above 70˚C
• Some boil their sausages before they BBQ, not what we do, tried it but not impressed with the final flavor.

I cooked this awesome chicken, bacon and sausage roll last week thought I would share the recipe as we enjoyed it so much. Made my own spice mix with hot chili pepper and cracked peppers, delicious.

Now we are in the market to change our BBQ and been looking around I found this new one,The Bugg at Beefeaters but hubby thinks it is too small, what do you reckon? Thinking about it with the amount we cook a bigger one is probably the better option. I quite fancy one that has 4 burners. Found one priced between 1001 -2000$ which is the top of our budget, it’s got a 10 year warranty so all I have to do is get him down to look at it.

As a family we tend to go for big fat sausages over thins ones and I get our casings from the Casing Boutique – they have a very good website with some clear instructions how to stuff your sausages, I always recommend that newbies go and read those tips before starting up.

Nice…