Grilling Burgers, Brats, and Other Good Stuff

With the passing of Memorial Day, summer is officially here and if you haven't already, it's time to break out the grill. Here are is my take on outdoor grilling...

In the words of Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, "Man cook outside with fire; woman cook inside with magic. Fire good! Magic Bad!" (Insert appropriate grunts here). That said, I am a traditionalist; I think if you are going to cook it on gas, you may as well cook it in the house, so I use charcoal. What I am going to offer here is my traditional Memorial Day cookout feast, at least the parts that get done on the grill. This is also a review of my new outdoor cooking apparatus (also known as a grill). First, the menu:

Brats
Hot dogs
Hamburgers
Corn on the cob
Baked Beans
Potato Salad
And for dessert, strawberries and blackberries on mini chip pound cake.

Before we get to the grill, as any chef will tell you, prep is everything. I started the day by getting the fruit together for dessert. I had bought a 2 pint carton of strawberries and a container each of blackberries and raspberries. I'm not one to wax nostalgic for the good old days but I do miss the old pressed cardboard strawberry cartons. The plastic ones don't let moisture escape and the berries go bad faster if you ask me. So after inspecting about a dozen cartons I found one that was acceptable. The blackberries were excellent though and I thought the raspberries were, but when I opened them they were moldy so into the trash with them. Prepping strawberries is easy. First I always use a glass mixing bowl, metal ones leave an aftertaste. I remove the greens with a spoon; don't ask why, it's just the way I was taught to do it at Frisch's Big Boy; and then I cut them into halves or quarters with a sharp knife. I dumped the blackberries into the bowl, carefully turned them a couple of times to mix, and topped it with a tablespoon of sugar. Some people add a lot more, but I don't think you don't need that much. Cover in plastic wrap and stick in the refrigerator.

I then turned my attention to the brats. As a kid I was raised on Khan's® brats and if I'm at The Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati I'm sure to have one, but for the backyard grill I like the uncooked variety, preferably something made locally rather than a national brand. For six brats I start out with a 3 quart saucepan. I put three bottles of beer in it, preferably a brand with some backbone. German imports are too expensive to cook with, but a microbrew lager will work, as will Miller Genuine Draft®, avoid the "King" though, it just doesn't have enough flavor; and please, don't use any kind of light beer, you might as well boil them in water. Cut up one quarter of a medium sized white onion into strips and put them in the pan with the beer and add your brats. Turn the heat to medium and keep an eye on the pot. Hot beer can get awfully foamy and overflowing beer into the stovetop can land you in divorce court. You want to get a slow boil going, more than a simmer but not a rolling boil. Let them cook for a good twenty minutes; they should just start to float when they are ready. Don't mind that gray color, we're not done yet.

Next I started on the corn. Now there are a lot of ways to make corn on the cob and I've tried all of them. This is the one that works best for me. Get corn still in the husks and preferably with a half inch or so of the stalk attached; leave the husks on for now. The day you are going to cook them, carefully peel the husks back so the leaves stay attached and clean all of the silk out. Fold the leaves back up onto the ears and soak them in a bucket of water for 1 to 2 hours.

Let's Cook!

Start your grill! I have used a lot of grills over the years from the cheap Hibachis to smokers to 55 gallon drums cut in half, and my current weapon of choice is the Weber Performer ® 22.5 inch. This is the standard Weber grill mounted in a cooking stand that includes a large working surface on one side, a charcoal bin underneath and a propane ignition system. I know what I said before, but I'm not cooking with the propane, I'm just using it to light the coals. The entire frame is powder coated and any parts that need to be bare metal are made of aluminum. There is a thermometer mounted in the lid that can double as a meat thermometer. Also included is a pair of containers used to bank charcoal for cooking with indirect heat. The cooking surface has hinged portions on either side that can be flipped up to add coals or wood chips while cooking. Overall it is a good, sturdy grill, but by far its best feature is the propane ignition system. The system uses standard 14 or 16 oz propane cans that feed a burner tube that protrudes into the bottom of the bowl just below the fire grate. It's fantastic! Turn the knob, push the button, and the coals are lit. The height of the cooking surface is fixed so temperature control is done by varying the amount of charcoal used, which takes a little practice. At just under $300.00 it's a little pricey for a charcoal grill, but worth it.

Once the edges of the coals are white you turn the propane off and it will be about fifteen minutes before they are ready to cook on. While I'm waiting I get back to the corn. Take the corn out of the bucket and peel the husks back again. Cover the ears with a good coating of butter or other spread. Then add salt and pepper to taste. Pull the leaves back up around the ears and wrap in a layer of aluminum foil. Back at the grill the coals should be ready, spread them evenly and put the grill on. I arrange the ears in a circle around the edge of the grill and cover it with the bottom and top vents halfway open. This produces a temperature of about 475 degrees. The foil will protect the corn husks from scorching and leaving a burnt taste behind, while the water soaked leaves will steam the corn. I leave them on the grill, covered, for about twenty minutes.

The meat of the action

After twenty or so minutes you can start cooking the meat. You can make your own hamburger patties with all kinds of things in them but I prefer the basic hamburger and have found nothing better for grilling than Bubba Burgers ®. These are available in the southeast and are made of Angus beef. They are a frozen product and you simply take them from the freezer and put them on the grill. I season them lightly with steak seasoning and that's it. I put the burgers on the center of the grill and then add the steak seasoning. I leave the corn around the outside to continue cooking. When you remove the lid from the grill the coals will get more air and heat up, so I turn the corn to keep it from scorching. Once the burgers are on the grill leave them alone! Don't move them, and for Pete's sake, don't smash them with the spatula, you'll just squeeze out the juices. When you see a good amount of the juices rising through the pores on the tops of the burgers, they are ready to flip. Flip them over and season the other side. To tell if they are done, look along the edges of the burgers. If the color is even, they're done. Take them off the grill and put them on a clean plate, add cheese if you like.

Once you flip the burgers add the hot dogs and Brats. Grilling sausages like hot dogs and bratwurst is not as hard as people make it up to be if you follow two simple rules. First don't stab the sausage. Piercing the case on a sausage allows all of the juices to flow out, causes flare ups, and you end up with dry, burnt sausages. Secondly keep them turning. The casings can burn quickly so if you keep them moving you can avoid this. They should not sit over the coals without turning for more than about two minutes. To turn them I use tongs or just carefully roll them with the spatula. The brats should have a nice medium brown color when they are ready, the hot dogs will puff up and also get a slightly darker color than they do out of the package. I like to let them get some darker brown patches on them for that cooked outdoors taste, but remember there is a fine line between outdoorsy and burnt.

Finally everything is ready to serve. I know, I didn't mention the beans or the potato salad, or the pound cake for that matter, but those are my wife's things. A word about condiments; just because you have ten different things to put on you brat, that doesn't mean you need to add all of them. Personally I'm no fan of sauerkraut which is popular, I prefer just good yellow mustard, preferably Plochman's®. Brown mustard is OK if you must, but that is about all a good brat needs.

Finally no job is over until the cleanup done. Once everything is off the grill clean it with a brass grill brush. A little effort now will save a lot trouble later when you want to use it again. Happy Summer and happy grilling!