Witness the First Barbecue?

 Could this have been the first barbecue ever? 

Or maybe an incident that started the caveman wanting to change the way he ate meat?

Curious? You should be. Check out this video and see what you think. Could this have been the start of barbecue?

First Barbecue?

Make Your Own Homemade Gravy

 One of the things I like most when cooking chicken or beef is gravy. But it's not always possible to get enough juices to make it.

Not to worry. Here is a gravy recipe I make all the time.

Pour your juices from the chicken or beef into a saucepan. If there's not enough to make gravy for the meal, you can add broth. I don't bother keeping broth. I use chicken or beef bullions and mix it in water. In this case pour a cup or so of the water you need to make a generous amount of gravy into the juices and add the bullions cubes. I'll usually add 2 or 3 cubes per cup. 

A little trick to make the gravy even better is to mix beef and chicken bullions. 

Now add some flour into a shaking container and add water. Shake until the right thickness. Bring the gravy mixture to a boil and slowly add the flour mixture to the juices. Keep stirring and only add a small amount at a time. Add until you reach the thickness you want.

This is delicious and when my chicken recipes call for mashed potatoes, I'm good to go.

Trouble at the Barbecue

 I thought you might get a kick out of this. I do animations as a hobby, and this is one I did about a confrontation as a barbecue.

It's made for fun, and I hope you get a kick out of it.

I'm toying with adding some animations into this cooking blog. I'd love to hear your comments as to whether you like this idea or you think I should only focus on cooking. My idea with this animation and cartoons is to make a cooking site that not only gives you some good ideas for your next meal, but entertains you along the way.

Easy Hamburger Pie - Cheap and Delicious

 It's always nice to be able to make delicious recipes that don't cost much. Nowadays, it's pretty much a must.

Here's a hamburger pie that is not only delicious but is also easy and won't cost much. It is a casserole and will feed 3 - 4 people. I'm a widower and I can get a couple meals out of it, although one of the meals has to be with my grandson since it's his favorite.

Ingredients:

    1 pound hamburger

    2 cans tomato soup

    1 can peas (drained)

    4 - 5 potatoes

The number of potatoes is your choice. I like a lot of mashed potatoes on top and, if I make too many, I put the leftovers in the refrigerator for another meal.

Brown and drain the hamburger. In a casserole dish, add the 2 cans of tomato soup and the peas. Mix well. Add the hamburger and, once again, mix well. I like to add salt and pepper to taste.

Mash the potatoes. Don't make them too runny or too thick. This is going into the oven so they will be losing some of their moisture. 

Scoop the potatoes evenly onto the tomato soup mixture. Turn the oven to 400 degrees and put the dish on the middle rack without preheating. Set the timer for 20 minutes. Check at 20 minutes to make certain the mixture is boiling.

Serve. Yep, it's simple. But wait until you tase it. 

Hot Dogs at the Cook Out

 

OK. I'm gonna make a confession here. I used to always grill my hot dogs and I still do, when I'm only making hotdogs. 

However, if I'm grilling burgers or chicken or another meat at the same time, the hot dogs go into my air fryer.

Don't judge me. Listen, if you're just grilling a hot dog, it's pretty easy. But you have to stay at the grill and watch them so they don't burn. And that's fine. 

But if you've also got burgers on the grill, it can get pretty tough to get the hot dogs to come out the way you want. It is really hard to finish them at the same time. 

I'd always find myself trying to find less heat so I could mover the hot dogs there. As far as the top warmer grill, I'd ditch them after a couple times in use as they always got in the way.

Don't worry. I don't do burgers or steaks in my air fryer. I know a lot of people do now but I'm not one of them. Even in the winter I head outside to grill them. 

I'm going to suggest that, if you have ab air fryer, you try your hot dogs in it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Grilling Steaks

 

Grilling Steak!

OK. The bottom line here is practice makes perfect.

More than any other meat you will grill, people want their steaks cooked just the way they like them; from rare to well-done. If you are throwing a steak barbecue for a lot of people, all I can say is "Good Luck"!

Go to some of the best steak house restaurants and ask to get your steak cooked the way you like it. You won't always get what you want. So how can you possibly expect to always get what you want barbecuing at home?

If you are cooking it for yourself - not a problem. If you miss a little you can live with it. Particularly if you have a good cut of meat. Although I admit I get pretty irritated when I overcook a steak.

Make one for someone else though . . . . . oh man. You're sweating bullets. You do the best you can just to hear them say "Good steak". You can probably live with a "Not bad Bob". But you are going to have those that are going to point out that "I like to see more red on the inside" or "Geez. You ever done this before?".

The absolute best way to get the steaks grilled the way everyone wants it is going to be a thermometer. The fork thermometers work decently, but the holes they make in the steaks are pretty big so you can lose some juices here. The best kind are thermometers with the smallest diameters.

Having said that, I never use one for a steak or hamburger. Chicken and pork? Sure. Steak? NO!

But if you want to use one, this chart might help. The temperatures vary as to what is considered medium, medium rare, etc., but this guide works.

• Very Rare Steak - 120°
• Rare Steak - 125°
• Medium-Rare Steak - 130° - 135°
• Medium Steak - 140° - 145°
• Medium-Well Steak - 150° - 155°
• Well-Done Steak - 160°

Next you can move up the method of the pros. A finger poke. This is not easily mastered but gets better with practice. The best way to master this is to use a thermometer and try the finger poking for the different readings until it becomes fairly simple to you. I use this method.

Give the steak a poke and test for firmness.

• Rare Steak - soft to the touch
• Medium-Rare Steak - yields gently to the touch
• Medium Steak - yields only slightly to the touch, beginning to firm up
• Medium-Well Done Steak - firm to the touch
• Well-Done Steak - hard to the touch

You really won't know if you got it right until you and/or your guests cut into the steak.

• Rare Steak - red in the center and warm throughout
• Medium-Rare Steak - pinkish red in the center and fairly hot
• Medium Steak - pink in the center, grayish brown surrounding, hot throughout
• Medium-Well Done Steak - grayish brown center, only a trace of pink
• Well-Done Steak - gray in the center

Important tip:
Taking a steak off of the grill doesn't mean it has finished cooking. The heat that has built up in the steak will continue to cook the meat until it begins to cool off and can add an additional 5 or 10 degrees to the steak's temperature. It's best to undercook a little and let the steak sit for a couple minutes to reach it's serving temperature.

Some say you can always throw it back on the grill but I don't always agree. To me, once you have cut into the steak, tossing it back on the grill is not only an embarrassment; albeit one you can live with; it seems to dry it out. If it is really undercooked, you might have to do so (really if too much undercooked the juices haven't completely released anyway so a little more cooking may bring them out) but otherwise, I say eat it.

Barbecue vs Grilling

 In reality, most of us consider barbecue and grilling to be essentially the same thing. And there's really nothing wrong with that.

But, for the sake of argument, here's the difference between the two.

Grilling is almost always a fast process over high heat and barbecue is almost always a slow process using indirect heat and/or hot smoke.

First let's explain grilling. In a typical home grill, grilled foods are cooked on a grate directly over hot charcoal. The cooking is rather fast. We can grill a steak in 8 - 10 minutes if the heat is hot enough.

Iin barbecuing, the coals are dispersed to the sides or at significant distance from the grate, which means the food is going to take longer to cook. Alternately, an apparatus called a smoker with a separate fire box may be used. Hot smoke is drawn past the meat by convection for very slow cooking.

This is essentially how barbecue is cooked in most genuine "barbecue" restaurants, but many consider this to be a distinct cooking process called smoking.

The slower methods of cooking break down the collagen in meat and tenderize tougher cuts for easier eating.

My grandson is shown here grilling. Start your kids young. He is now 18 and has a grill and a smoker.