Caribou steak and Pork Country Ribs!

I hope everybody is having a good week. I had a long work week last week. I ended up working part of Saturday. Saturday afternoon, I rushed home after working in the morning. Stacy had to go work a Pampered Chef show, so I made dinner for Isabella and I. We had things that Stacy doesn't like very well, since she wasn't going to eat with us. We had grilled caribou steaks, yams, and Brussel sprouts. I made everything on the grill.
    For the caribou steak, I put some Worcestershire sauce on it and rubbed it with Pampered Chef's new Tex-Mex Rub. I grilled the steaks over medium high heat for about 15 minutes until they were about 160 internal temp. I might have over cooked them a little, but since it was wild game, I wanted to make sure it was done. I also grilled some yams over medium heat. I microwaved mine for 2 minutes before I put it on the grill since it was so big. I grilled the yams for about 20 minutes until they were soft and cut them open. I buttered them and sprinkled brown sugar on top. The yams stayed on the grill for a few more minutes to melt the sugar a little. To grill the Brussel sprouts, I tossed partially thawed sprouts with olive oil and Pampered Chef Three Onion Rub. I grilled them in the basket for my Char-broil Grill Top Infuser. I tossed them several times as I grilled them over medium heat. I took them off when I took the yams off and they were golden and some had a slight char.  Everything turned out good. The caribou was a little tough, but had a nice flavor. The rub was both sweet and spicy. The yams were really good as were the sprouts.

Caribou steaks, yams and sprouts glistening in the sun on the grill!

Yams all sugared and about to come off the grill.

The finished product. (Isabella makes me use one of her princess place-mats)

    Sunday for dinner, I smoked bone-in pork country style ribs, corn, and potatoes. I seasoned the ribs on all sides with Big Butz BBQ Pig Pollen rub and let the flavors meld in the fridge for a couple hours. When the the time came, I set my charcoal grill up for 2 zone grilling. I piled some coals on each side then added lit coals to each side. In the middle, I put a pan of water to separate the 2 piles. To each pile I added a chunk of cherry wood.  Once the wood was smoking nicely, I added the pork to the middle. I put the potatoes on one side and the corn on the other. For the potatoes, I used the Pampered Chef BBQ Vegetable Rack. For the corn, I used the Pampered Chef  BBQ Corn and Skewer Rack. After the first 20 minutes, I started spritzing the ribs with apple cider vinegar to keep them moist every 20 minutes or so. I smoked the corn and potatoes for an hour. I rotated the corn a few times whenever I spritzed the ribs. Just before I took the corn off, I brushed it with a mixture of melted butter and Pampered Chef Tex-Mex Rub. I smoked the corn so long because it was still frozen a little. I had vacuum sealed fresh corn and froze it when it was on sale at some point. When the ribs were almost done I sauced them with Big Butz Cranberry BBQ Sauce. I sauced them on each side and let the sauce set for about 10 minutes before I took them off. The pork was on the grill at 300 degrees for about an hour and a half.
      Dinner was great. The ribs had a great flavor and nice smokiness. They each had a beautiful smoke ring. The sauce was sweet with a slight spice to it.The corn was tasty. It had a subtle smoke flavor and the rub was really good on it. We had the potatoes with  chive flavored sour cream and butter. They also had a great smoke flavor to them.

Potatoes, ribs, and corn ready to smoke.

Ribs shining before I remove them.

Ribs, corn and potatoes ready to eat.

Nailed the smoke ring!

      I have started watching the show "BBQ Pitmasters". I found past episodes online for free and am now on season 3. If you like BBQ and food competitions then I highly recommend this show. I have learned some tips from watching it. I started spritzing my ribs because of the show.
     There was no winner to my giveaway since no one entered. I will try again some other time. I always appreciate comments about my blog. Please continue to share it with your friends and help me grow my audience.  Speaking of giveaway check out another blog that I follow. Grill Grrl is doing a big giveaway! She always has good recipes on her site too.  Have a great week and happy grillin'.

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Asian Style Pork Chops and Faux Crab Stuffed Peppers!

I hope everybody had a good week. I was able to grill twice last weekend. As a reminder, I still have a giveaway going. Just go to the post Blog Anniversary and Giveaway and leave a comment. It is as easy as that.
  We bought some pork chops on Saturday and Jasmine rice, so I decided to make an Asian style pork chop. We were out of an already made marinade, so I found one on Pinterest that had ingredients we already had in it. The recipe is super easy. All you have to do is combine soy sauce, honey, lemon juice, ground ginger, olive oil, and minced garlic together in a ziploc bag. I used bone in pork chops and marinaded them in the bag for about 2 hours. Make sure to mix them in the bag a few times while they are marinading. That helps to keep the pork evenly coated. I grilled the pork over medium heat for about 15 minutes or so. We ate them with the Jasmine rice and steamed broccoli. The pork had a great flavor. The meat was moist and had the taste I was going for. We will be keeping the marinade recipe around.

Asian chops, Jasmine rice and broccoli

    Sunday, we wanted something with for potatoes dinner. I looked in the freezer and found we had a package of imitation crab chunks and knew we had red bell peppers. I decided to make crab stuffed peppers. For the stuffing I mixed the crab chunks, about 4 ounces of  softened cream cheese, about a cup of Italian bread crumbs, a quarter of an onion minced, and a few squirts of Dijon mustard. I mixed it all together and stuffed what I could into 4 red bell pepper halves. I had some extra that I put in a ziploc bag and froze. I then grated some Parmesan cheese on top of each one. I direct grilled them over medium heat  sitting on the Pampered Chef BBQ Vegetable Rack for about 20 minutes. I just sat them on the rack and didn't poke them on. The imitation crab was already cooked so all I had to do was let the flavors meld and cook the onion. They came out super good. Next time, I think I will add a little salt and pepper and maybe a little Old Bay style seasoning. They were great for just making up the recipe.

Peppers on the grill

     Along with the peppers I also made fries with red potatoes. All I did was cut them in wedges. Then I seasoned them with olive oil and Pampered Chef Garlic and Herb Rub. I grilled them over a medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes on my Pampered Chef BBQ Roasting  pan. As a dipping sauce, I mixed mayo and Sweet Baby Ray's together.

Imitation crab stuffed peppers, fries, and dipping sauce

I hope everybody has a good rest of their week. Happy grillin'.

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Churro Style Grilled Pineapple!

I hope everybody is having a good week. If you haven't already, check out my special blog post Blog Anniversary and GIVEAWAY. The giveaway ends April 21. I grilled both Saturday and Sunday last weekend, even though we were busy with errands and house projects.
    Saturday for dinner, I grilled some mild Italian brats over medium heat until they were golden brown. We then cut them up and mixed them with sauteed onions and spaghetti sauce. Also, to the sauce we mixed in some cheddar and Parmesan cheese. We tossed it with noodles and had a nice pasta dish.

Yummy Brats!

Pasta dish

  The highlight of the meal was the pineapple I grilled. To prep the pineapple, I cored it and cut it in thick strips. Then, I mixed about 1/4 cup sugar and at least a teaspoon of cinnamon together on a plate. I rolled each piece of pineapple in the cinnamon sugar mixture. I grilled the pineapple over medium heat until the sugar was lightly caramelized. Total time on the grill was about 8-10 minutes turning half way through. It was super good. We dipped some of it in vanilla pudding. Isabella ate 1 and a half, Stacy 2 and I ate the rest. They were that good.

Churro Style Pineapple

      Sunday, we went to the local home show and ran a few errands. I grilled pork chops and grapefruit for dinner. I seasoned the pork with salt, pepper, and Pampered Chef Maple Herb Rub. I grilled them over medium high for about 15-20 minutes turning them half way through. I let them rest for 5 minutes before we ate them with some Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce. We also had mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. The pork had a great flavor to it. I did the grapefruit like I did a few weeks ago. I cut it in half and ran a knife around it to loosen the segments. Then I sprinkled it with sugar and coconut and grilled over medium for about 20 minutes. The coconut was slightly toasted by this time. It was warm, tangy, with a hint of sweet goodness.

Pork, broccoli, mashed taters and Sweet Baby Ray

Grilled Grapefruit

   As part of the weekends projects, I fixed an issue with our dryer. I also took apart the dryer venting and cleaned all the lint out. Our dryer had been slow drying and I found big clumps of lint partially blocking the vents. We have lived in our house almost 3 years and never cleaned the vents. Our dyer works and dries so much better now. I highly recommend cleaning your dryer vent at least once a year. I will definitely be adding it to my yearly house maintenance tasks.  I hope everybody has a good week and happy grillin'.

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Blog Anniversary and GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to the one year anniversary for JustPlaneBBQ. I hope everybody is having a good week. A lot has happened this past year. I am going to look back a little on the last year and let you know about a few new things. Also, I will be announcing my first giveaway!
    I'll give you some stats to begin with.I grilled at least once a week, but usually more. Multiple bags of Kingsford briquettes were used and many trips to fill the propane tanks were made.  I posted 51 times and had over 760 views.

 My top 3 posts are:

1. Char-broil Grill Top Infuser First Grill with over 61 views.

2. Schitzel with over 23 views.

3. Char-grilled Meatball Sandwiches with 22 views.

    In my quest to gain more readers, I have joined Pinterest and post blog highlights there. Find me on Pinterest. I will be adding a follow button to the blog soon. I also now have a Facebook page for Justplanebbq.  Here is the link. Go like my page if you haven't already. I will be trying to post BBQ and grilling related things there on a regular basis.

GIVEAWAY!!!
I would like to hear from you about what you enjoyed about the blog this year. To help encourage you to do that, I have decided to do a giveaway. I will be giving away a local Alaska BBQ sauce and a Pampered Chef Rub of my choosing.
Entry and Rules:

1. Leave a comment below with what you learned this year, your favorite recipe/post I did, or any other memory of the year relating to my blog.
2. An additional entry will be earned by liking my Facebook page. Please leave a separate comment saying you like my page.
3. This contest is only open to residents of the 50 states of America. 
4. I will be picking the winner randomly.
5. Contest runs until the 21st of April.

I hope you enjoyed this look back. I will be doing a regular grilling post later on in the week. Good luck and happy grillin'.


EDIT:
There was no winner since no one entered. I will try again soon.

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Smoked Duck!

I hope everybody had a good week. Sunday was not only Easter, but it also was my birthday. We made my birthday dinner on Saturday, since Sunday was going to be busy with Easter. I had been wanting to try and smoke a duck for a while, so I figured my birthday was as good as a time as any.
        First, off we bought the duck that morning. I thought that the store had fresh duck, but they were frozen. As soon as we got home, I threw the duck still in its package in a bowl of cold water. Later, I let water run over it for a bit. It was still frozen in the middle when I prepped it several hours later. To prep it, I removed the neck and innards before cutting the breast bone and laying it flat. Then, I scored the skin to let some of the fat render out. I seasoned the whole thing with salt, pepper, Pampered Chef Bell Pepper Rub, and a little sesame oil. For the grill, I heated up some briquettes in my chimney starter and poured them over a small pile of unlit briquettes on each side of the grill. In the center between the two piles, I had a pan of water.  I then mixed up a special concoction to put in my smoker box. I mixed brown rice, a little brown sugar, 3 green tea bags using just the tea not the bags, a crunched up cinnamon stick, bay leaf, a few whole cloves, and 5 alder wood chips. I stirred everything together and put it in my smoker box over one set of coals. On the other set of coals, I put the bottom rind of a pineapple. When everything was starting to smoke, I put the duck skin side up over the water pan. I smoked it for over 2 hours at 300 till it reached 165 internal temp. I had a hard time getting an accurate read with my remote thermometer probe, so I checked it with my instant read thermometer when I thought it looked done and it was. We let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

Smoking mixture

Smoked duck

       To go with the duck, I grilled some broccoli. I chopped the broccoli and put it in foil. To season it, I added salt, pepper, and a little of the bell pepper rub. I put the packet on the propane side of the grill for 10 to 15 minutes while I was heating it up to grill pineapple. When the broccoli was done, I opened the packet and sprinkled a handful of grated cheese on it. I closed the packet back up and let the heat of everything melt the cheese.
      Like I said a minute ago, I also grilled some pineapple. I got the grilled pineapple recipe from a pin on Pinterest that Stacy pinned. It was super easy. I shook the pineapple in sugar and lemon zest and grilled till it was caramelized.

Grilled pineapple

   Stacy made brown rice and I also made sweet and sour sauce. The sweet and sour sauce recipe was also from Pinterest. I modified it only slightly. Instead of all the water that the recipe called for, I substituted pineapple juice and enough water to make 2/3 cup. I saved the juice from the pineapple when I cut it and squeezed some from the rind also.

Dinner upclose

Whole dinner

     The whole dinner was super delicious. The duck had a great flavor with a slight smokiness to it. Even Stacy liked it and she had been very skeptical of it before. The broccoli had a good flavor also. The sweet and sour sauce was amazing. It was better than store bought. We will definitely be making this sauce again. We love grilled pineapple at our house and it was no exception this time either. I mixed the leftover duck, rice, and sauce together and had it for dinner at work this week. I don't have a picture of the pie that Stacy made, but it was awesome. It was one of the best strawberry rhubarb pies that I've ever had.
      Sunday was Easter. In the morning we got up to find that the Easter bunny had visited. Isabella was super excited and had lots of fun. Isabella had fun Saturday night helping us decorate eggs. We had some of our colored eggs for breakfast. We went to Stacy's parents house and had a good Easter lunch.
   

Isabella's Easter basket

Eggs we decorated.

I hope everybody has a good rest of their week. By the time you get this post it will be the one year anniversary of JustPlaneBBQ. I will be doing a special post looking back on the year this weekend. Look forward to that and more. Happy grillin'.

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