Tips and Recipes

So you’re interested in finding a grill smoker combo? A grill smoker combination is especially useful for a chef with a tight budget or not a lot of extra space to store their cooker.

Let me first explain the difference between a grill and a smoker:

A barbecue grill cooks food directly over the fire. Grilling is what many Americans refer to when they say “barbecue.” Most grill foods are cooked quickly over high heat. Grill foods include burgers, steaks, and hot dogs.

A barbecue smoker uses indirect heat to cook your food low and slow. “Low and slow” with smoke is absolutely the ultimate in barbecue. Usually we smoke around 225-250 degrees F. It can take anywhere from a couple hours to 14+ hours depending what you’re cooking. Common low and slow foods include pork ribs, whole chickens, Boston butts, and beef briskets.

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Here we’ve got another great recipe from Michael Pitre at Heaven Made Products. The name of it is Amazin’ Cajun Bacon-Wrapped and Stuffed Whole Smoked Chicken. I just renamed it to Oinkin’ Birdie. So much easier to say and remember. 🙂  Anyway, it’s a recipe definitely worth checking out, the perfect intersection of bacon and barbecue! This is probably unlike anything you’ve ever dreamed of before, and will certainly get your arteries rejoicing.

Click here for the Bacon Wrapped Chicken Recipe.

It’s worth the click, I promise!  🙂

Please check it out and leave a comment, especially if you use it. I’m just itching to know what you think! Is it good or ugly? Tell me.

Have fun,

Mr. Lavern

PS. Looking for some great seasoning to use on your grill or barbecue smoker? Michael is giving away a free gift with each order. Now is a great time to experiment with his awesome seasonings. Check out the recipe and scroll to the bottom of the page to learn more.

Sometimes we barbecue lovers just need to come back to the simplicity and “commonness” (if that’s a word?) of good ole’ burgers on the grill. They are easy and fast to make, and if you do it right, outstandingly edible and impossible to beat.

I really wanted to share something special with you for this fourth of July weekend. Sadly, I’ve been feeling under the weather yesterday and today, so I decided to simply show you how I grill burgers and fries on my Meadow Creek SQ36 Smoker. If you really want an enjoyable cookout with the family, grill up some burgers and fries and serve them right off the grill. It’s a lot of fun to pick at the fries and dip them in ketchup right on the grill.  🙂

To the right is the finished product, for your drooling convenience.  😉

I’ll be using a Meadow Creek SQ36 Smoker with a grill pan in this recipe.

First, I pile my charcoal together and light it with a propane torch.

We usually mix our own burgers because they are so much better than what we can buy in the store around here. While the charcoal is getting lit, you can mix up your meat. Earlier I posted a good recipe for homemade burgers. Click the link for our recipe and other tips on grilling burgers.

After the charcoal has white edges, I spread it out evenly and set my stainless steel food grate on the grill.

In my homemade burger recipe here, I explain in more detail my secrets for grilling amazing burgers, but it’s really not that hard. Season them well on both sides and get ’em cookin’!

Now, here’s where it gets really fun—grilling fries.  🙂

Spread aluminum foil on the grate and use a fork to poke a bunch of holes in it. This way the smoke can travel through the foil. Dump your fries on the foil and season them with Meadow Creek’s regular seasoning or another rub that tastes great on vegetables. “Stir” them a little partway through to help them cook more evenly. Once they’re hot and soft all the way through, they’re ready to eat.

I like to add a slice of cheese to each burger as they finishing up on the grill. It makes a great presentation and the “eaters” will love it too.

If the fries are getting close to done, but you need more time with the burgers, slide the foil over to a cool spot on the grill.

Time to dig in! 🙂

Add some bread, lettuce, onion, and ketchup—and get your jaws in gear.

Now it’s your turn.  Please leave a comment to share your thoughts. Like it? Ideas for improvement?

Just go do this and have fun,

Lavern

Recently, one of our customers asked for advice on how to handle pulled pork cooked in advance since Boston butts can take all day to cook. He’s cooking on a Meadow Creek TS120 BBQ Smoker with a BBQ42 Chicken Cooker added to the front. Here are some tips for cooking Boston butts for crowds.

In catering, most of the time it will be very impractical to serve pulled pork fresh off the smoker. Not only would you need to be on-site extremely early, but also you would need to guess how long it will take and try to meet deadlines, which can be terribly stressful with Boston butts.

You can smoke your meat the day before. Pull it, put it into foil pans, and cover it with foil. Make absolutely sure you cool the meat correctly. Then pull your smoker out to the party the next day for show and use it to heat the pork in the foil pans. You can also use your smoker to cook chicken or meats that get done in a few hours if needed.

If you don’t want to use your BBQ smoker to heat the pulled pork, you can heat it at the party in an electric roaster.

You could also experiment with smoking the butts the day before and refrigerating them overnight. The next day put them back on the smoker at the party to heat them and after they reach temp, pull them on-site at the party. This is just a idea. You need to experiment with it before doing it large scale. With this you need to make sure you cool these large chunks of meat properly. I think it could easily be done if you have adequate refrigeration.

Now you can learn how simple it is to grill juicy chicken breasts that attack your taste buds on your first bite. Today’s recipe comes from a special guest and friend, Michael Pitre. He has developed a tasty line of barbecue seasonings under the name Heaven Made Products. Click here to check out his amazing stuff.

Tell him I sent you, and he’ll include a free gift when you order a 16 oz. shaker ($2.50 value).

This recipe shows you how to grill bacon-wrapped, skinless boneless chicken breasts—”Heaven Made” style. These instructions are for using a gas grill, so if you are using charcoal, you’ll just need to know how to fire your grill and the time it takes to cook will vary. But I dare say your bacon-wrapped grilled chicken will be a bit more heavenly yet.  🙂

Enjoy the recipe and have fun!

Lavern Gingerich

In this recipe, we are using boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You can also use thighs or drumsticks. Thaw the meat and bring it to room temperature.

Tip: If your meat comes with skin, leave the skin on for more flavor. I would add an additional minute of cooking on the skin side to crisp the skin and render more of the fat.

Trim excess fat off the meat. This reduces flare ups and the amount of calories in the dish.

Season the chicken with Heaven Made Products Extra Spicy All Purpose Seasoning. This seasoning is a Cajun-based seasoning with extra Cayenne Pepper in it, but this Cayenne Pepper is big on the flavor scale and low on the heat scale like Popeye’s Fried Chicken. Popeye’s uses cayenne pepper to add to the distinct flavor of their Famous Fried Chicken. This seasoning will not burn your mouth.

Next, season the chicken with Heaven Made Products Steak Seasoning. This seasoning has lots of garlic flavor in it along with black pepper, onion, and my famous base ingredient that really helps increase the natural flavors of the dish being cooked.

Above: Heaven Made Products Extra Spicy Seasoning and Steak Seasoning.

Wrap the seasoned chicken in thin cut bacon and secure it with toothpicks that have been soaked in water for at least 10 minutes.

I heat the grill on high for 10 minutes, then turn off all of the burners. Next, I spray a small area of the grill with cooking oil and place a piece of chicken on that spot and repeat till all pieces are on the grill. Once the chicken is on the grill, I turn the burners back on high for one minute to sear the bacon and chicken. Next, I turn the burners down to medium flame to reduce flare-ups.

I use my handy Pam spray lid to prop my grill lid open a crack, so I can watch for flare ups and either blow them out or spray them with water. I cook the chicken for 4-5 minutes on each side. The time it takes to cook your chicken might differ depending on your own grill.

By this time the chicken is looking good. Flip it back over using a pig-tailed meat turner and grill them for another five minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 150-160 degrees F.

Now doesn’t that look good? 🙂  The chicken is done, but still juicy and the bacon is semi-crispy. Sides pictured above are Maple Flavored Baked Beans and Broccoli and Cheese Rice.

(Don’t forget to remove all of the toothpicks before diving into this dish.)

To step it up a notch, top the bacon-wrapped chicken with your favorite cheese right before removing from the grill and give the cheese time to melt. We use Pepper Jack Cheese.

Thanks for reading and God bless!

Michael Pitre
Heaven Made Products

PS. Lavern here again. I’d like to say I’ve used Michael’s rubs and his steak seasoning is simply amazing on grilled chicken. My wife claimed it was some of the best chicken she ever had. And by the way, Michael just told me that he will include a free gift with your order of a 16 oz. shaker if you tell him I sent you.  🙂