Eat This Blog: First Grilling of the Season - BBQ Ribs

Posted on 5 April 2008 under Barbecuing, Eat This Blog, Grilling, Photos | 6 Comments

As it was finally 60 degrees here in Michigan for the first time this year we took the opportunity this afternoon to set up everything on the back deck, including my grill. After getting up fairly late and having a late pancake breakfast we’d picked up these ribs for this evening’s dinner. I made up a quick rub of dark brown sugar, Koasher salt, pepper and granulated garlic. After drying the ribs and rubbing them with the mix I baked them at 275 degrees F for about three hours. I then lit the grill, slathered these things with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce and grilled them over low heat for about an hour. While I did cut them before serving the meat fell right off the bone anyway. Oh yeah, the grilling season has begun! Tomorrow evening is supposed to be the same kind of weather, and there’s chicken waiting in the wings.

(Click on either of the images to view a larger version.)

13ABC’s Zack Ottenstein Helps Make Dinner

Posted on 5 August 2007 under Barbecuing, Grilling, Photos | 3 Comments

We generally don’t share our times we have with this particular dear friend online here outside of his normal line of work, that of reporting his part of the news on the local ABC affiliate, 13ABC WTVG in Toledo. But after reporter and sometimes anchor Zack Ottenstein said he wanted to learn how to make my signature German-Polish Oven-Roasted Potato Salad (which he’s been known to eat for breakfast in the studio before air-time), we couldn’t pass up the opportunity of showing you this particular side of this popular local reporter. Because of his schedule we don’t see Zack very often, but when we do it’s always a good time, be it at our house for a homemade meal, or at a restaurant for just an hour or two.

You know, when you see someone like this on-the-air, working hard to bring you the news, knowing they work considerably-longer hours than just those few you see on the air, sometimes you wonder what the rest of their lives are like. Getting to know Zack has been a real education in this. Working sometimes seven-days-a-week for longer than just those days (he worked 19 of the past 20 days), and with family 300 miles in one direction and a special gal 200 miles in the other direction, you just wonder how he keeps going outside of that schedule, and still keeps smiling. But that’s part of why we feel blessed to have Zack’s friendship. It’s his great positive energy.

Zack’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the kitchen, either! Sure, I made him wear those funky food-handler’s gloves when he was mixing the potato salad as I talked him through it. But that’s because of those tiny Punjabi celery seeds I use in the salad. One wrong move, and you end up with one of those danged seeds jammed full-force deep under a fingernail. That hurts! I’d picked up the gloves for another project some months ago, but the gloves also protect well when a seed goes into attack mode. They’re impossible to dig out of there with a pair of tweezers. You really have to get under the nail with the pointy end of a toothpick, just digging and digging till the seed pops out.

As Zack continues to move up in the world of television news reporting, it’s great to watch him delve into other areas off-air as well. Would he also make a good TV chef? I tend to think so. But then again, if you’ve ever seen him play basketball on the same team as that Lee Conklin guy, you’d be thinking, “Hey, he’s pretty darn good at that … I wonder how he’d do on a pro basketball team …”

Review: Michigan Maple Barbecue Sauce

Posted on 24 June 2007 under Barbecuing, Grilling, Ingredients | 1 Comment

A few nights ago when serving ice cream, Mary reached into the fridge, opened a jar and was about to spoon the chocolate sauce onto the ice cream … when she caught a wiff of maple. Looking at the jar more closely, she realized what she had in her hand wasn’t chocolate sauce. It was Michigan Maple Barbecue Sauce.

Honestly, we have no clue where this stuff came from or how the still-sealed jar had landed in our fridge. Freaky …

Reading the label on the jar, I found the sauce was made by Sansonetti Gourmet Foods in Holly, Michigan, a little ways south of Flint. You can order their products online, or at a number of retail stores. Looking at the retail store list, we’re guessing one of my sisters had bought the jar at Oliver T’s in Grand Blanc and had brought it down at some point. We just don’t know when.

Last night I planned to grill a few pork steaks, along with some brats and hot dogs. Mary talked me into barbecuing those pork steaks with the Michigan Maple Barbecue Sauce. I seared the steaks over high heat so they’d get decent grill marks, then slow-cooked them over low heat at the other end of the grill. When they were almost done, I slathered on the sauce and let it glaze, over slightly higher heat for a few minutes.

Man, that stuff is good! When you bite into meat that’s been barbecued with Michigan Maple Barbecue Sauce, you get this great maple flavor. After a moment, you then get a bit of a rich and spicy barbecue flavor, but not enough to overpower the sweetness of the maple. I’m sure we’ll be getting more of it.

This jar, though, is a bit odd. It’s obviously pre-2006 as trans fats aren’t listed on the label. And it’s an older label than what’s shown on the manufacturer’s web site.

And even though the “use by” section of the label is blank (?), it’s still good. Yeah, that good!