Smell My Kitchen

This recipe was amazingly easy to accomplish, and the whole house smelled absolutely amazing and sweet! Learn how to make tender and juicy sweet BBQ ribs on the grill.

The baby would scream at me for more and the other 2 ate about 1/2 a rack each. These ribs literally melted in your mouth. The sauce was sweet and if you like adding a little spicy, you can add a few finely chopped jalapeno peppers to your sauce, it will give it that extra punch.

You can easily prepare the ribs in advance: you can rub them with the spice rub, wrap them in foil and put them in the refrigerator for a few hours, even a few days. Just make sure to let them sit on the counter for about 20-30 minutes so they reach room temperature before putting them in the oven to cook.

I prefer cooking them in the oven to boiling them, but if you want to boil instead of precooking them in the oven, I suggest you cover the ribs with water, add garlic spice, paprika, salt, and pepper,  boil them for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Then you can put them in the oven or on the grill for another 45 minutes or so until the meat has reached 160 degrees F. I personally find the ribs a little less flavorful when you boil them first. but they are quite good either way.

For us, the summer season is the every-two-days-we-need-to-eat-BBQ season. This time was no different as we made filet mignon on the grill.

Steak is a funny kind of meat. At least to me.

Steak is the only meat you can cook, over-cook, under-cook, barely-cook, any in-between-cook and it will still be good, or at least edible without side-effects.

Want to under-cook a chicken? Salmonella for you!

This means that steaks are very versatile and can be enjoyed in so many different forms.

Our favorite steak is the filet mignon. It is so tender, it tastes absolutely amazing every time.

But what can you do to have the best-grilled filet mignon in the neighborhood? Here is how my dad taught me, and with the years I found a few extra tricks.

First of all, you want to bring your filet mignon to room temperature before cooking it. It will result in a more evenly grilled steak.

Next step would be to season it with a light brushing of olive oil and spices (pepper, garlic powder, onion salt etc let your imagination run wild!)  and then bring it to the grill. But how much cooking does it take to make the perfect filet mignon? It depends on how much you want it cooked.

Here’s a little list of cooking times for about 1″ thick steak;

• Medium-rare: about 5 minutes per sides or an internal temperature of 135 F.
• Medium: about 7 minutes per sides or an internal temperature of 140 F.
• Well-done: about 10 minutes per sides or an internal temperature of 150 F.

You can also go by feel, with the back of your fork – press lightly on the steak, if it is rare it will be soft,  a medium steak will be firm but yielding and a well-done steak will be firm.

Now, those grill marks, if you wish to make the perfect grill marks on your filet mignon, there are a few steps to take. Don’t worry, it’s quite easy.

Put your steak on the grill for 1 minute without touching it. Flip it on the other side for another minute. Then, and here’s the tricky part, flip it again but this time turn it 45 degrees so the grill marks from the first minute are sideways. The new marks will be the one looking good. At that point cook it for the remainder of the time and then flip it again, keeping it at a 45 degrees difference from the second minute, and cook it for the remainder of the time for the second side.

Basically, for a medium-rare steak, it would go like this: 1 minute, flip, 1 minute, flip, turn 45 degrees, 4 minutes, flip, 4 minutes.

Easy, isn’t it?

And now that your steak is ready, put it in a nice looking dish let it sit for a few minutes to let the juices flow and serve it with your favorite side dish (we served ours with thinly sliced potatoes) you can also add a few pieces of blue cheese to your steak and let it slowly melt before serving with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar glaze, as we did with ours, and prepare yourself for the enjoyment of your guests!

Today’s post is about something a little bit exotic that we made. We decided to make horse beef burgers on the grill. Do you think the kids loved it or hated it?

First of all, stop thinking “ewwww”. I know most of you think it because that’s what we thought too. But part of having a food blog is the excitement we feel about trying new food. The meat tasted very, very good. I actually preferred it to normal beef and Chantal loved it as well. It is cleaner, it tastes great and, surprisingly, it is less expensive. Win, win, win!

We topped our horse beef burgers with feta cheese and tomatoes, as well as ketchup. We put garlic, bell pepper and red onion inside of the meat, it was delicious. So, did you think about the kids? Do you think they liked the horse beef burgers or they hated it? They actually enjoyed it quite a lot! Chantal and I kinda cheated though. We didn’t tell them they were eating horse meat because we know them and they are difficult.

Once they were done, we asked, “Do you know what you ate?” , we then told them it was a horse and they were both surprised and quite happy with their new discovery! All in all, we think we will do more stuff with horse beef since it can replace any beef from any recipes.  Shepherd’s pie with horse beef? Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.