BBQ

This past weekend we took in another opportunity to try one of the 100 restaurants highlighted by the Washingtonian as one of the best of 2009's "Cheap Eats." This adventure brought us to Bowie, Maryland for some pretty good BBQ.

KBQ Real Barbeque
12500B1 Fairwood Parkway
Bowie, MD 20720
301.352.8111
www.kbqrealbarbecue.com

Washingtonian Review

Thoughts:

This was good. As you can see I ordered up the pulled pork platter with two sides; Baked Beans and Mac & Cheese.

What I loved was the naked pork. Just smokey and pulled. Not drenched is sauce, you get to add that on your own. It's nice to get just the meat. Great flavor and plenty moist. Not having the sauce on the meat, gives you the opportunity to try one of two sauces that were shared with us. Original and Spicy. I preferred the flavor of the original and the spicy had just the tiniest bit of kick to it. So when I used the sauce, I mixed the two!

The beans were tender, sweet and peppery. The mac & cheese was some of the best BBQ joint mac & cheese I've had.

DancerinDC ordered the ribs, mac & cheese and cole slaw. He loved the ribs. I had a little taste. They were good. Just off the grill taste, and again, no sauce to smother the meat. The slaw, he said was tasty, but swimming in sauce.


Overall, I'd go back again, but I'm not sure I would make this a destination BBQ trip. If you're in the area, it's worth a stop. If you need to drive, consider really taking the time and heading to Carter Cue in Mt. Airy, MD.

Chinese Style BBQ Pork

Last night was a very tasty dinner that required a little advanced planning. This pork roast requires 24 hours of marinading for the best flavor. I would be interesting in trying to let the pork marinade for 48 hours. There was some good flavor going on, but I'm wondering if longer is better in this instance.

I served the pork with my carrot/cilantro salad.

For the salad, I started with the recipe located here as inspiration. I used the vegetable peeler to make ribbons from the carrots. The cilantro was very tender, so I didn't chop it, just torn it apart. (mistake!) The dressing was lime juice, rice vinegar and olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. I didn't have any sesame seeds or sesame oil; which I wanted to use for an additional layer of flavor and texture. The salad was good, except the cilantro really was over powering! Next time, no matter how rustic and easy I'm trying to make something with cilantro, I will chop it.

The pork was really easy. Mix, pour, marinate, roast, rest, slice, serve. And you can do most of the work the night before. Don't be tempted to add an additional star anise pod, you'll see in the recipe, it's flavor is strong and aromatic, which is good, but like the cilantro in the salad, can be over powering. Use just one! Next time I make this, I might consider brush with some reserved marinade/sauce, then placing under the broiler for a minute prior to serving, to get the outer layer extra caramelized and crunchy!

Leftovers of this pork would be divine in stir-fried rice!

Chinese Barbecued Pork
Adapted from: 5 Second Rule

3-4 lb pork loin roast, cut into 2 large pieces
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 TB dry sherry
1 tsp 5-spice powder
2 scallions, smashed
2 stems cilantro, smashed
1 pod star anise

Mix sugar, soy sauce, sherry and 5-spice.

Place pork in a dish or zip top bag, pour soy mixture over the pork. Add scallions, cilantro and star anise. Zip the bag shut and give everything a good solid squish around.

Place in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Turn and squish once in awhile.

Preheat oven to 350. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and parchment (the sugar will make a huge mess as it caramelizes, the foil makes clean up easy, the parchment prevents the roast from sticking and tearing the foil). Remove pork from the marinade and place in the center of the baking sheet.

Strain and reserve the marinade. Simmer reserved marinade for at least 10 minutes, watch carefully as it reduces to a thick sauce.

Roast pork for 30 minutes, basting once or twice with reserved sauce. Flip the pork, baste again, and roast for an additional 10 mintues. Until the pork caramelizes and just begins charring at the edges.

Transfer meat to cutting board and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving. Drizzle some additional sauce over the sliced pork.

Rub Your Chicken*

*for maximum flavor!

I've done this BBQ dry rub twice now and really like what it does for the chicken.

For enough rub for about 20 pieces of chicken (thighs/legs):
5 TB BBQ of the Americas
2 TB BBQ 3000
2 tsp Kosher salt
3 tsp Brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground Ancho chili
1/2 tsp ground Cumin
1/2 tsp ground Coriander
Pinch of Cinnamon
30 grinds of fresh Black pepper

Blend together. Store in an airtight container until you're ready to use.

To use, liberally coat the chicken and rub the spices into the chicken. Allow the chicken to sit for an hour or more to let the flavors soak in. This time I left the chicken overnight in the fridge.


Grill the chicken until it's done. I get about 4 minutes per side when the grill is good and hot. Then give the chicken a brush of a little BBQ sauce, to glaze the chicken. One extra minute per side to let the sauce get hot and sticky.

Here's the finished chicken (and hints of two other posts that are pending). Looks a little more done than you might like. The chicken had great flavor and was juicy. It is a little blackened. I forgot to set the timer, so the first four minutes was actually something like 7-8 minutes for one side! Oops. That's ok. For the thigh, I just took the skin off.

So, there are two dry rub blends that start this new blend. The first time I made this, I had both of those blends. I didn't have enough of the America's blend and the 3000 blend is a little too smoky (artificial smoky) for my taste, so I put the two together with some additional flavors. Worked well. This time I adjusted the quantities a little more and liked it very much. The cinnamon was a new touch. Barely there, but noticeable.

I couldn't be happier at this moment.

So after the great berry pickin'...we needed to eat. We worked up an appetite.

Well, I'm ready to drive an hour away for this meal AGAIN! And AGAIN! And AGAIN!!!

CarterQue
Barbeque & Grilling Company
235 South Main Street
Mt. Airy, MD

This has been one of the best BBQ meals I've had. Period. Done. Over.

I had the pulled pork slider plate (above). I three little sandwiches and had a different sauce with each. One a little tangy, one a little smoky and one that was just down right brilliant! And beer battered french fries. I KID YOU NOT.

Pulled pork sandwich with black raspberry sauce and mac & cheese.

Seriously. I can't describe the tastiness of this meal. The pork was tender and succulent. The sauces were each unique and satisfying. The best one, the most unique was the award winning Black Raspberry Grilling Sauce. 1st place; Nation's Best at the DC BBQ Cook-off. I bought a bottle for home use! The sauce was lightly sweet and full of many complex flavors. Beautiful complement to the smoky pork.

Two meat plate; pulled pork and brisket with the slightly tangy sauce.

After lunch we went out for two wine tastings. Elk Run Winery and Loew Vineyard in Mt. Airy. A beautiful day. When I have some more time to ruminate on the wines I'll share some notes.

Pulled BBQ Pork

This weekend was another Cheverly Community Market weekend. I didn't prep any featured recipe to share, but was there to talk about wine! Caroline Hermann joined me to discuss food/wine pairings and we provided an info sheet on hosting your own wine/food tasting with three types of wine and three different, simple foods. I'd love to share the document, but I have no idea how to load a PDF to Blogger. Any ideas? The market was low-key this weekend, but we had fun anyway!

Last night's dinner was all about the market! Three of our main components came from the market. One boneless pork loin roast. One container of Mesquite Spice Rub from Vann's Spices. And one dozen Parker House rolls. All three were amazing.

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Pulled BBQ Pork 2 (Pulled BBQ Pork 1, HERE)

I started with a 2 1/2 pound roast and two-three tablespoons of the spice rub. Liberally coat the roast with the spices and rub in. I put the roast in the fridge and let it sit over night.

The next day I pre-heated the oven to 300 and got the dutch oven going on the stove over medium high heat. With a few tablespoons of olive oil over high heat, sear the roast on all sides. When you have a nice crust, remove the roast to a plate and drain off the excess oil/fat.

Add one large onion, diced and a small handful of crush garlic cloves. Allow to sweat for a few minutes until they start to carmelize. Season with salt and pepper. Deglaze the pot with 1/2 cup of hard cider. Add one can of whole, peeled tomatoes. Add one dash of liquid smoke (if you like) and a dash of Worcheshire sauce and two tablespoons of brown sugar. Bring to a simmer. Return roast to the pot and place in the oven. For FIVE hours!!!

Everything in the pot will be beautiful, rich and so tender!

Remove the roast to a baking sheet to cool. Now we'll make our BBQ sauce. And here's where it gets tough. I didn't write anything down! Add one 8oz can of tomato sauce. 1 tsp cider vinegar. 1 tsp each of cayenne pepper, chimayo chile powder, ancho chile powder and chipotle chile powder. 1 tsp ground oregano. Salt & pepper. A little more brown sugar. Allow to simmer and bubble. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Oh, I added a very tiny pinch of cinnamon and ground clove.

While the sauce is bubbling. Pull the pork. Discard any pieces of fat or connective tissue. I cut the large pieces with a spoon. Yes, a spoon. The pork was so tender I barely had to apply any pressure with a spoon to cut it! AWESOME!

Take a roll of your choice. If you have access to the Parker House rolls the market. Get them! Add a heaping pile of the pulled pork and dress with as much sauce as you like.

Devour!

The pork was wonderful! The spice rub brought a lot of great flavor to the party. Without the sauce, the braised pork was still full of great flavor. It took several little tastes to get the sauce exactly the way I wanted it. A tiny bit of twang, nicely sweet; not cloyingly so. And enough heat to say hello, but not to smack you in the face!

For dessert we had more rolls with Martha's Jam; Strawberry Kiwi that we also got at the market. Wonderful!

Quick Update

Hello! Happy Memorial Day. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday.

We've been a little busy, but have been enjoying some great food. As you know, Saturday was the Cheverly Community Market. We came home with lots of great food. Fruits & Veg. Baked goods and jams. Meats and dairy! Woot. Then we headed to spend the night with Lord, Lady and Baby B. More good food and great drink. Sunday we ate a dozen farm fresh eggs, then back home to BBQ some chicken for a mini potluck with C&S&K.

This morning we made the Brioche & Asparagus Strata. Stay tuned for some step by step photos. We have some more errands and fun stuff to do today.



This is my chicken on the grill on Sunday night. The chicken received a great dry rub full of all sorts of great herbs and spices. Then in the final 4 minutes, they were given a light coating of BBQ sauce. Really good!

BBQ

Ribs for dinner.

I'll elaborate later, I'm tired now...long weekend/day...parboiled the ribs until cooked and tender, grilled and basted with sauce on the grill pan...served with buttered rice. Tasty...not very tender...a bit dry. Looked good, smelled good, tasted good. And really easy...again, I'll elaborate later when I'm more than partially awake.

UPDATE 6/19/07:
Ok, this was pretty easy, but these were not tender and were dry. So what I'm documenting here is what I did, so next time I can rework this to make them better. I pretty much know what I did wrong and did it on purpose, sort of.

First, I simmered the boneless country pork ribs in water with an onion, garlic clove, bay leaves and some other spices. I did this for about 40 minutes. At this point I removed the ribs and set them aside. I coated each rib in sauce and tossed them on the grill pan, rotating and basting with more sauce for about another 20 minutes.

In the future I would plan to braise the ribs in a brothy sauce for 90 minutes to 2 hours. I suspect that will tenderize the ribs and make them moist in the process. I can still 'grill' them afterwards to carmelize and get some crispy bits.

All that said, for an hours work, they were tasty and worked well for dinner.

That's Spicy!

Before I left for work this morning, I tried to find a quick recipe to make for dinner. This one jumped out and drew my attention. Really tasty and fast! Once you read through the recipe, you'll see that I 'pulled' the chicken instead of slicing it. Only reason I did that is because the Safeway didn't have regular chicken breasts, just the thin sliced breasts. Those don't slice into nice pieces so I 'pulled' them before adding them to the sauce. In the future when I make this, I'll only use one chipotle pepper. Two made these a touch spicy! I think if I were going 'southern,' these would have been piled high with some cool, crunchy slaw. But I'm not a big slaw fan, so that probably won't happen here...but I could see it working really nice with this sandwich!


Honey-Chipotle Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches
from Culinary in the Country

1/2 cup water
1 tsp ground cumin
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
16 ounces boneless/skinless chicken breasts
1 TB canola oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp cumin
1/2 cup tomato puree
2 chipotle chiles, canned in adobo sauce, finely chopped
2 TB adobo sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
3 TB honey
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp salt
4 sandwich rolls
2 ounces smoked mozzarella or Monterey Jack cheese

In a large saucepan, add water, 1 teaspoon cumin, 4 sliced garlic cloves and chicken. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is done - about 10 minutes. Drain and remove chicken. Slice chicken across grain into thin pieces - cover to keep warm.

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add minced garlic and cook until they are just beginning to turn golden - about 3 minutes. Stir in 1 teaspoon cumin and cook until fragrant - about 1 minute. Mix in tomato puree and cook until mixture thickens to a paste-like consistency - about 4 minutes. Stir in chipotle chiles, adobo sauce, vinegar, honey, Worcestershire and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Place the sliced chicken into the sauce and cook until thoroughly heated through - about 3 minutes.

Preheat broiler.

Cut the roll in half and place cut side up on a baking sheet. Toast rolls under the broiler. Remove only the top halves of the rolls from the baking sheet. Evenly divide chicken mixture among the bottom halves of rolls and evenly scatter the top of the chicken with cheese. Place back under the broiler just until the cheese melts. Remove and place top half back on to serve.

Makes 4 servings.

Garlic and Cumin

The completed sauce...tangy, slightly sweet and spicy!

Pulled chicken. Simmering lightly while the buns toasted.

Bun bottom piled high! In the background you can see the tops. I scooped the insides out of the bun tops, so when they rested, the nestled the BBQ and melted cheese.

Melting!