Sweetie Is A Genius!!

Tags

bar-b-que, bbq, chicken, grilling, hamburgers, hot dogs, hover grill, IQ110, low and slow, pork chops, pork ribs, smoking, tender ribs, Weber

For quite a while now (ok, since about a week after I got my Weber Silver (WS) bbq), I’ve been acquiring accessories.  First was the rotisserie.  Then the charcoal holders, then the Smokenator, then the Pizza Oven, then the hinged grates, then the IQ110 temperature controller, then the remote dual thermometers.  Sheesh, it seemed like the draining from my wallet would NEVER end!

All these accessories, while really nice, didn’t address my main complaint about the WS.  It only has 363 sq. in. of cooking surface.  Put on a slab of ribs cut in half and you’ve pretty much filled up the cooking area.  NOTE:  I prefer either St. Louis style or flat ribs, not those wimpy baby back ribs.

See?

Now at our house, we’re not exactly a 1 meat per cookout household.  If I’m gonna do some decent bbq, I want at LEAST 2 kinds of meat.  Ribs and chicken, chicken and pork chops, chicken and steak, brisket and ribs, hot dogs and burgers and chicken…..you get the idea.  Sooo, I bought a second WS.  Great!  Now I’m up to 726 sq. in.!  Hooray!  Now I can do a slab of ribs and a split chicken.  Or a small brisket (REAL small brisket) and a slab of ribs.  Or a split chicken (split in half) and a small brisket.  Whooppee!!

Well, not exactly big whooppee, though.  What if I want to invite our friends who have 4 kids plus the parents?  Yeah, I can cook in 2 batches.  Burgers and hot dogs for the kids first, followed by the “real” bbq for the grownups.  Only thing is,the kids usually really like my ribs, too.  And I cook the burgers and hot dogs high and fast, but everything else low and slow, so I’ve got to let the grill cool waaayyyy down.  What to do, what to do, what to DOOOO?????

After looking around, I found a cool accessory named the Rib-O-Lator that consists of 4 pans that attach to the rotisserie and go round and round ferris wheel style, cooking like the bbq joints cookers.  Excellent idea!  But, after reading a lot of reviews for it, it seems like unless you have the thing adjusted juuuuuuuuust right, it’ll flip your food out onto the coals.  BUMMER!  (Yeah, I grew up in the 60s and 70s with the hippies!  LOL)  Plus I’d need to get another rotisserie.  Plus 2 sets of the pans (which are $100/set + shipping).  I don’t think so!!

There’s another accessory that sits on top of the regular grill and is basically another complete grill rack.  It gives an extra 247 sq in. cooking surface, for a total of 550 sq. in cooking surface.  Now we’re getting somewhere!  Only problem is, it’s almost $38 with shipping included.  YIKES!  Two of them, one for each of my WS grills comes to $76!  OUCH!  Plus, it only sits 2″ above the regular grill.  You ever measured how thick a piece of brisket is?  Or a half chicken?  2 inches?  Heck, that’s nowhere near enough height to let smoke circulate!

OK, I looked around my bbq extra goodies and I had 2 old round charcoal holders from my old keg grill that were 19″ in diameter, but a bit rusty.  That works out to 254 sq in each.  Hmmmmmmm, they’re 19″, the WS is 22.5″, so they do indeedy fit on top of the regular grill with a bit left over.  OK, but how to get them to fit on top, a minimum of 3″ above the grill?  After looking around online, I saw several folks who had welded legs onto a similar grill and were using that.  Outstanding idea!  Only problem:  I don’t have a welder.  Drat!

I considered several possibilities.  Bending some wire to hold it up.  Flimsy, would probably fall over and dump my food  Buying a little welder.  More expensive than buying the HoverGrills.  Using pieces of brick?  Hmmm, not too bad an idea, but they’re only 2″ high. OK, 2 would give me the 4″ height I’m looking for.  But I only have whole bricks.  I’m not really good at splitting bricks evenly, so that was out.  What to do, what to do, what to DO??

I mentioned what I was thinking to Sweetie late this morning.  She thought for about 30 seconds and said “Why not use some long bolts?”  BINGO!!  4 1/2″ carriage bolts, some 1 1/4″ washers, a few nuts.  WOOHOO!!  Sweetie’s absolutely BRILLIANT!

So off to the nearest hardware/lumber yard.  I got 10 ea 4 1/2″ X 5/16″ carriage bolts, 30ea 5/16″ X 1 1/4″ washers, and 50ea 5/16″ nuts.  Looked like this:

I got out the dremel tool and sanded off the grill and got it nice and shiny.  Then I took a bolt, screwed a nut on all the way to the head, added 2 washers, another nut screwed almost to the washers, then I separated the washers, put one on the top of the grill, one on the bottom of the grill then screwed the bottom nut down, sandwiching the grill grate wires between the washers.  I squoze the wires together a little to make a better fit between the washers.  I did that 4 times, once at each “corner” and once again in the middle.  After all, we don’t need the top grill to sag onto the meat on the bottom grill, do we??  Of course not!  LOL

Then I put another nut on the bottom of each bolt, screwed it on about 1/2″, then slipped on another washer.  Just one this time.  Then another nut and tightened it against the lower washer.  Did that for each bolt.  What I ended up with was a grill that was held up almost 4″ above the bottom washers and adjustable in height using the bottom nuts.  I slipped that on top of my grill on my WS and voila!!  There it was!  My very own GrillTopper (pat. pending!  LOL)! Yep, I did 2 of them, one for each grill.  🙂  🙂

These puppies give me a total cooking area of 617 sq. in. per grill and adjustable height of 1″-4″.  That’s a total of 1234 sq. in. of cooking space if/when I use both of the WS grills.  Now we’re talking!!  That’s enough for 4 slabs of ribs or 4 whole chickens (split in half) or 2 slabs of ribs and 2 whole chickens (split in half) or a couple of small briskets and 2 slabs of ribs or a couple of small briskets and 2 whole chickens (split in half) or 4 whole chickens (split in half) or a ton of chicken leg quarters or enough wings to feed an army or heat buns on the GrillTopper and burgers and hot dogs underneath or garlic bread on the topper and anything else underneath or…………..ok, you get the idea.  🙂

And I spent a whopping $14.50 for the parts to make my GrillToppers.  WOOHOO!

Finally, if I want to use only one of my WS grills, I can put on the rotisserie extender (with or without the rotisserie??  Hmm, gonna have to check.) and stack the 2nd GrillTopper onto the 1st GrillTopper and have 3 surfaces to cook on.  That’d be great for smoking stuff only, because I don’t know if the heat would circulate enough.  Hmmmm, sounds like I’ll have to experiment a bit.  Darn the luck!!  LOLOL

Thank you Sweetie!

A Walk Down Memory Lane aka Chicken Thoughts

Tags

aunt, bar-b-que beans, bbq, bbq pit, briquets, burgers, Cajun sausage, charcoal, chicken, cole slaw, cookie sheet, Dad, hamburgers, hot dogs, leftovers, low and slow, pecan pie, pork chops, potato salad, seasoning, sides, steak, uncle

No, this is NOT thoughts about being a coward!  Got that??  LOL  It was thinking back on how my Dad cooked chicken bbq that got this post started.  Miss ya, Dad!

I grew up in a very small town in SW LA.  My parents were, indeed, genuine, true Cajuns.  Some of my best memories from back then are of bbqs that we’d have at home almost always on a Sunday.

Mom would get together with Aunt Bertie on Thursday and they’d cook up a huge pot of Cajun bbq sauce.  It was thick and chunky with onion and bell pepper and celery pieces, salt and pepper and garlic powder, catsup and tomato sauce and tomato paste, made with love and ending up all tomato-ey and overall absolutely scrumptious!  Us kids would dip pieces of bread in it and eat the sauce just like that till Mom shooed us away!  LOL  Since we didn’t have the bbq until Sunday, the flavors had a chance to meld and mellow in the ice box till it was time to take some and put it in a small pot, cover with vegetable oil and heat it to boiling.  Then, they’d pour off the oil to use for basting.

Saturday night, Dad started things off by splitting a couple of chickens, getting a couple or 3 pork chops, digging out a piece of sirloin steak from the freezer, making up some hamburger patties, get a big hunk or 2 of Cajun pure pork smoked sausage and, about my favorite (don’t tell anybody, but it’s STILL one of my faves!!), a whole pack of hot dogs!  He’d use a big full size cookie/cake sheet to hold it all and start seasoning.  The chicken came first.  A bit of salt, a good shake or 5 of black pepper, a light dusting with garlic powder, a sprinkle of paprika, turn over and repeat.  Next, on top of the chicken, came the pork chops and steak.  Same-o-same-o on the seasonings.  Finally, on top, he’d lay the hamburger patties out and the sealed package of hot dogs.  The sausage was seasoned enough that it just was plopped wherever it would fit.  Then, cover with a dish towel and into the ice box overnight.

Come Sunday morning, it was early Mass for us!  7 AM in the morning!  We’d all get up early and head over and attend.  It was usually over about 8 AM.  We’d come home, change out of our Sunday clothes and Dad would get started.  About that time, Mom and Aunt Bertie would get started on the side dishes of oven  bar-b-que baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad and garlic bread.  They’d usually put in a pecan pie, too.

He had a 55 gallon drum that had been sliced in half, hinged at the back, a handle put on the top front, and mounted on legs.  Back then, these big metal drums had screw-in bungs.  The bbq pit was always set up to that the bung was on the lid part, at the top.  It was removed when the cooking was going to start and acted kinda sorta like a chimney.  The guy who made them would cut air vents in each end at the bottom that were used to control the heat and coals.   The pit always got set up under a big old pecan tree for the shade.  There were a few chairs around for my Dad, my uncle (usually Uncle Lincoln and Aunt Bertie were there) and maybe a couple for the kids if we were good. About that time, the radio got plugged in and tuned to a “chankey-chank” station with good Cajun music.  IIRC, it was a station in Eunice, LA, on the AM dial.

Dad was a big fan of charcoal, not briquets.  Back then (we’re talking late 50’s to  early to late 60’s), we didn’t have fancy stuff like chimneys to light the coal.  The coals went on the bottom of the barrel in a pile.  He’d set the end vents open all the way and then give the charcoal a splash of kerosene, let it soak for 5 minutes, then toss on a strike-anywhere kitchen match that he had lit.  After the flames died down (lid open) and the kerosene smell went away, he’d spread out the coals and put on the cooking grates.  After a couple of minutes, he’d get out the big pliers, grab the grates with the pliers and then use a stiff wire brush to clean the grates.  When the grates were clean, he’d put them back over the coals and it was time to sit back and relax a bit and get the real bbqing going.

Dad would take the chicken halves and put them on first.  A little sizzle when they hit the grill and then lid down.  Every 20 minutes of so, he’d take some of the oil from the bbq sauce Mom and her friends had fixed on Thursday and give the chicken a good baste with it and flip them.  Course, it was beer time, too (not for me, though I was too young.  😦 LOL).  While the chicken was cooking, he’d keep adjusting the side vents to keep the temperature juuuuuusssttt right and use a little piece of wood to hold the top of the pit open just a little, no more than an inch.  Nope, no thermometer, just experience.

After a couple or three of hours of turning, basting, basting, turning and pulling and twisting the leg at the end till it was loose which showed the chicken was done, he’d put the chicken halves on one side of the pit, move the coals over to the other side of the pit and put on the pork chops, the sausage hunks and the steaks.  He’d cook those for about 30 minutes, flipping every 10  minutes or so.  By then, the coals was dying down pretty good, so he was doing “low and slow”.  When the steaks, sausage and pork chops were done, he’d move them over onto the chicken halves if there wasn’t enough room on the cool side for them to sit on the grate.  Generally, they’d get one or 2 swabs with the bbq sauce basting oil at each flip and then get set on top of the chicken.  Last but certainly not least, he’d open the side vent where the coals were, give them a few minutes to heat up and then he’d throw on the burgers and hot dogs.  The burgers went on over the coals, the hot dogs on the side of the coals.  They cooked the quickest, so of course they were the last to go on.  The coals were still about medium low, so it took another 20 or 30 minutes to get them done, being VERY careful with the hot dogs, turning them every few minutes so they wouldn’t burn.

When the burgers and hot dogs went on, it was time for the ladies to start setting the table and getting out the potato salad, cole slaw, bbq baked beans and french bread that had been split, buttered, garlic powdered, wrapped in foil, and put into a warm oven about 10 AM.

He’d get that big old cookie sheet and stack everything on it with a little of everything showing under the rest and carry it into the house and set it on the table.  Like I said, you could see everything, but the chicken was the star!  Golden brown color with a tinge of red from the sauce, skin almost but not quite crisp, steam rising from it, you could tell it was the best and tastiest thing on that big old platter of meat!  OK, I admit it, I think the hot dogs were a close second!  LOL

By 1 PM, it was time to eat!  A nice blessing of the food then everyone sat down and dug in.  Oh mannnnn!!  Dad would take a sharp knife and cut the chicken halves into quarters and then split off the legs from the thighs and the wings from the breasts.  Usually it wouldn’t take hardly any knife work, the chicken would just pull apart at the right places.  The steam would rise and the juices would flow clear.  Then we’d get our choice..a leg, a thigh, wing section or some breast.  Add a piece of steak, a little pork chop piece, a small slice of sausage, a burger and a hot dog and there wasn’t hardly room on the plate for the side dishes!  But we’d manage to get some of each of them on the plate.  Spread out some of the homemade bbq sauce all over and then chow down.  OHHHHHHHH!

After we had eaten about all we could, Mom would bring out her special homemade pecan pie.  It was heaven in a pie tin!  Of course, after all of that, it was time for a little nap.  Then leftovers for the next day or so.   MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

Good memories, folks.  And absolutely NO heresy here.  🙂

P.S.

Ask nice and I’ll put up the recipes I remember.  🙂  LOLOL