Blog

Tag: Grilling

Meat and One Veg

by Dan
Food & Drink / June 13, 2011

If you're a designer and you love meat (and that's got to put you in a pretty big category, right?), Bacon Ipsum is the website for you.

Bacon Ipsum? Indeed. 

Basically, Bacon Ipsum is an online text-generator that spices up the boring old lorem ipsum placeholder text used for design mock-ups in publishing and graphic design by inserting a whole lot of meat-related words. Text options include 'All Meat' and 'Meat and Filler'. 

Here's an 'All Meat' example:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet ham tail bacon headcheese chuck flank. Tenderloin jowl meatball chuck tongue t-bone. Bresaola sausage chicken meatloaf jowl pancetta. Hamburger pancetta ribeye pork belly biltong pig, bresaola ham hock. Jowl brisket bacon pork chop ground round shank. Pancetta cow chuck bacon andouille, boudin tri-tip bresaola beef ribs hamburger ground round pig pastrami brisket salami. Shankle flank chuck, tail swine shank tongue.

Beef hamburger tenderloin ham hock. Bresaola bacon pork chop ball tip rump, headcheese salami spare ribs venison tail drumstick boudin short ribs short loin. Sirloin bresaola short ribs, bacon boudin tail pork ham andouille ham hock rump sausage ball tip pastrami. Drumstick pork loin cow, pork boudin sausage strip steak corned beef ground round pastrami short ribs brisket. Ham tongue swine chicken. Jerky tenderloin rump, meatloaf shank short ribs pancetta sirloin ribeye tongue spare ribs boudin ham hock chicken turkey. T-bone boudin tail brisket chicken.

As I'm sure you'll agree, that is a whole lot meat! And it just go to show that everything really is better with bacon. Even Latin. 

And why do I mention this now?

Well, it is the season to be grilling, and there is that tiny matter of Father's Day this weekend, and as a dad (and a dude) my mind does tend to wander towards the BBQ (even if it isn't close to lunch time yet). 

So, on the off chance you're looking for meatier BBQ recipes, or just to happen to be looking for FATHER'S DAY GIFTS I thought I'd recommend two recently published books for bacon-obsessed dudes: Fire It Up: More than 400 Recipes for Grilling Everything by the guys that brought you Mastering the Grill, and Eat Like a Man: The Only Cookbook a Man Will Ever Need, from Esquire magazine's food editor Ryan D'Agostino.

But if you (and your dad!) can wait until September, you might also want to check out Whole Beast Butchery (available for pre-order from your local indie and Chapters-Indigo and Amazon online), in which San Francisco chef and self-taught meat expert Ryan Farr demystifies the butchery process. That, also, is a whole lot of meat right there... 

Of course, there is the merest possibility that this might just be too much meat for one blog post, so just to tip the scales back towards a semblance of a balanced diet for one minute, I thought I would also mention Plenty — a favourite in our office since it was published by Chronicle Books in March. 

Written by restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi, the book collects 120 vegetarian(!) recipes inspired by Yotam's Mediterranean background and his unapologetic love of ingredients.

Funnily enough though, Yotam is not a vegetarian himself... (I wonder if he thinks everything's better with bacon? Hmm... Perhaps not...)

Mastering the Grill for the August Long Weekend

by Siobhan
Food & Drink / July 25, 2007

The August long weekend is coming up fast. Are you ready? More importantly, is your GRILL ready?

If you want to do more than just BBQ, then pick up one of our most popular cookbooks this summer: MASTERING THE GRILL, published by Chronicle Books. It contains more than 300 delicious recipes, plus tips and techniques for the BBQ - from how various grills, pit barbecues, and smokers work, to the science of heat transference, and how different fuels affect this fundamental process.

You'll be a Master of the Grill in no time. To get you started, here are the author's top 5 tips on grilling:

* Never walk away from a grill, unless you're cooking with indirect heat. Since all grills have hotspots, you need to be there to rotate the meat to make sure it cooks evenly.

* Use a spice rub for instant flavor. Marinades don't penetrate deeply into the meat and often cook off. A rub will adhere to the meat and ensure great taste.

* When meat is ground, its juices escape. For juicy burgers, add water, ketchup, steak sauce, or any other flavored liquid.

* To give your meat a great crust, first sear the meat with high heat on all sides, then move it to lower heat to finish cooking. This helps your meat develop a crust and prevents burning.

* When grilling barbecued chicken, don't add the sauce until the last five minutes. The high sugar content of the sauce will cause it to burn if left on too long.

Is your mouth watering yet? Well, this will do it: check out some of the recipes for Herb Cheese-Stuffed Garlic Burgers, Grilled Corn and Crab Salad with Raspberries, and Smoked Chorizo Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Arugula. (Who knew you could make pizza on the grill? Obviously, I need this book.)

Get more info on MASTERING THE GRILL here and on the book's site.