OoM 015： How to Grill Like a Man with Scott Thomas
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Summary
A man who knows his way around the grill is a man that can earn the respect of his buddies and the affection of the ladies. Whether you re an amateur, a novice, or an expert, my guest today teaches us how to up our barbecue game.
Transcript
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A man who knows his way around the grill is a man that can earn the respect of his buddies
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and the affection of the ladies. Now, whether it's true or not, grilling and or barbecuing
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is viewed as a staple in every guy's toolbox of manly skills. So whether you're an amateur,
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a novice, or an expert, my guest today teaches us how to up our barbecue game.
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly
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chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is
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who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Men, welcome back to the Order of Man. I am your host and founder of
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Order of Man, Ryan Michler. Now, a bit of housekeeping before we get to our guest today. I want to let you
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know that I've begun producing a course designed to help you become a better man in all aspects of
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your life. So I've identified eight key skill sets that I believe every man must master. And I'm
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going to share each one of those with you. We're going to teach you how to be more likable, more
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profitable, a better husband and father, a stronger leader, you name it. We're putting together the
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tools and the resources to help you become a more well-rounded man. So if you want to know more about
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that and get the heads up and be one of the very first members, you'll need to head over to
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orderofman.com. Sign up there and keep an eye out in your inbox over the next 60 to 90 days for the
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release of that course. Now, remember, as always, we've got the show notes up for this show and they
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can be found at orderofman.com slash 015 as in episode 15. So today I have the pleasure of introducing
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Scott Thomas. Scott Thomas is the original grill and fool. He's overcooked, undercooked and burned every
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piece of meat that he could find. And after thousands of failures and quite a few successes
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and nearly two decades later, he started his website to show step-by-step, picture-by-picture,
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foolproof instructions on how us guys can make great food on the grill. So he consistently challenges
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the traditional rules and standards of barbecue. He grills anything from lettuce and leeks, brisket,
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bread. He's written feature articles for St. Louis and Feast magazines. He's been quoted in the
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Wall Street Journal. He's appeared on countless television and radio spots in his hometown of St.
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Louis. He's recognized nationally as one of the charbroil all-star bloggers and writes for Sears
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at grillingishappiness.com. All right, Scott, welcome to the Order Man podcast. Glad you're
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joining us with us today. Thanks for having me. It's going to be a good time. We're timely. We're
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going to talk all about grilling today. So I'm excited to have this conversation because as we get
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into the summer, of course, us guys tend to go out and we want to grill. So I'm excited to have you
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on the show today. I mean, I'm kind of a year-round guy when it comes to grilling, but it's kind of
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an occupational hazard. But yeah, I get that. That's true. That's true. And it would be nice
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to be able to do that. I guess it gets a little too hot for us sometimes in the summer. So it is
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nice if you have the luxury of being able to do it all year round. Yeah, you know what? I actually
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prefer winter grilling to summer grilling. I mean, you know, in St. Louis, the summers are
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brutally humid. I mean, so, you know, it's 100 degrees outside. It's 95% humidity. You know,
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let's go build a fire and stand next to him for three or four hours. Right. You know?
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Right. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Me, I'd much rather have a blustery fall day,
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you know, where I got to have a coat on and, you know, maybe not even necessarily a coat,
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like a vest, a pair of jeans, you know, football's playing in the background, you know, and that's
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my deal for grilling. But yeah, there you go. Yeah. But there is something about, you know,
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I kind of hibernate a little bit for about a month in late January, early February when
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it's brutally cold. I'm, you know, getting over the holidays and then I come out and I
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just can't grill enough once it starts warming up. Right. Nice. Well, good. So you say this
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is an occupational hazard. Is this something that you, with grilling fools, is it something
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that you started as a hobby and it just morphed into a occupation? Is it just, you know, did
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you set out with the intent of making a living doing this? Tell me where you're at right now
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and a little bit about your background. Okay. So I, yeah, I'm a big football guy. So I would
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go to talk football online during the football season with a group of guys and, and from around
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the country and we would, in the off season, we would share what we did on the grill. And
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so we would share like, you know, pictures like with like image shack or whatever. And
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we'd show like, I did this, you know, did these ribs last night and they were great. And we'd
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talk about what we did and we'd, you know, like basically swap recipes or tricks or tips,
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you know, and, and, and after doing that for a couple, three years, I had enough content
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buildup for a website, for a blog. So I started the blog November of 2008, you know, wonderful
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time to start a grilling blog in St. Louis, right? Right, right. And, um, I started it
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and, and I got some good content going and, and my main goal was basically to make it as
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a tax deduction for charcoal and meat, you know, stuff I'm going to buy anyway. So it's
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like a tax shelter. So I get a good amount of content right away. And so we get a fair amount
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of traffic because I just like flooded it with like 50 posts and like, you know, just
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a couple of months. Oh wow. Yeah. Stuff that I built up. And then people were going, Hey,
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I need more, you know, I want to see more stuff. I want to see more stuff. Well, I couldn't
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keep up. So I drafted and it was grillandfool.com. So I drafted my dad and my cousin on Super Bowl
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Sunday that year on, um, uh, in, in 2009. And it became, and we got, we bought grillandfools.com
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and then about, um, in April, the editor of the local paper said, we want to do an article
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about you. We realized that that was going to probably drive a lot of traffic and we
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probably needed a decent website instead of the one, you know, the piece of garbage
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I threw up, um, and insurance and incorporate. And, you know, so we did that. And so, you
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know, we'd pay for a website, the insurance fees, cause they didn't know how to insure a
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website. Our first quote was $8,000 for the year. Oh my goodness. Yeah. The second quote
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was like 600 bucks after, cause you know, it's something they didn't know how to insure and
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we deal with fire. So they were afraid. Right. Right. And so, but then we had to get
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incorporation fees. That's another 500 bucks. So my, my tax shelter was now hemorrhaging
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cash. Right. It was doing the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. So I, I had to start,
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you know, I didn't make some money. And so I, um, content, content, content. I think we
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got our first advertising client the next year. Um, and they're still with us. It's, uh,
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that's top right of our website, Andrea steak sauce, which is, um, great. It's a basting
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sauce for, it's not like an A1, but it's a, it's a basting sauce. It's phenomenal local
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here in St. Louis, but you can buy it online. Um, and so that was our first ad. And then, um,
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you know, it's, it's not, it's not a full-time business. You know, it's not my, I have a day
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job, but, um, it's, um, it's not far from that. You know, I could probably, if I were
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to quit the day job, if I wanted to go lean for a couple of years, I could probably do
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it. But, um, I'd rather keep doing the day job and keep this going. I, you know, I do
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both basically. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I am lighting the candle and I had more than just do
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wicks. I've got three or four going at the same time.
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Yeah. It's pretty cool that you're able to make some money and turn your hobby or your
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passion into something that's, that's producing some sort of revenue. It sounds like I just
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had a conversation, uh, yesterday with a buddy of mine and I asked him what he likes to do.
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And his answer was, I like to count mule deer. That's what he likes to do. And I was like,
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you know what, like you put together a YouTube channel, do something, but you could go out there
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and you could turn this hobby of counting mule deer and, and, and tracking them into something
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that can produce revenue for you. Especially the guys who like to, uh, reduce that count
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of mule deer, you know, that's right. That's right. They would really like that.
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Bang, bang. Now there's 10, you know, that's, that's, there's a client, there's a, there's
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a clientele there. There's actually a market for that.
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That's right. So what is it that you, cause it sounds like it's really gone well for you.
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What's resonating so well with, uh, your target audience, which I'm sure is comprised of predominantly
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Well, if you talk, if you go to any blogger conference or, you know, they want to teach
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you how to blog, they will tell you, keep it short, keep it sweet. People have an attention
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span of about, you know, nine seconds. You know, you want to have one picture and run
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and, um, screw that. I'm not doing that. I'm going to show people exactly how to do it.
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So our, our schtick, our elevator pitch, our, you know, our, our goal is step-by-step,
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picture-by-picture, foolproof instructions. So where a lot of, most blogs have less than three
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or four pictures. Our, uh, every one of our posts has close to 20 pictures. And so we'll
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take pictures of raw ingredients and take it every step of the way, um, until it's done
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because, you know, most, most cookbooks, most cooking blogs have a great picture, a set of
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instructions, um, and a list of ingredients and that's it. But, but, you know, when you're
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doing brisket for 15 hours, there's a lot that happens between put the brisket on the
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grill and take it off at, you know, 195, you know, and, you know, oh my God, it's looking
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so black and burnt. No, that's bark. That's okay. You know, and we'll show that. We're
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like, and we'll show, Hey, this is bark. And well, okay, this one, it looks like great
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bark. That's actually burnt. We screwed this one up and, and we'll show you, here's where
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we should have done this differently. Don't do this, you know? And, and so that's, I think
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what resonates the most is not only we showing you step-by-step, but we'll also go, well,
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here's the roadmap and here's where we took a detour and, uh, here's where it went south.
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Uh, and you know, here's how, you know, in the future, here's how to do it right. Or
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here's how we did it right the next time. And, and, you know, and that kind of resonates
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because we're being completely honest and we're showing our mistakes and, and, and hopefully
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what we're doing is that we're, we're steering people away from the mistakes we've made and
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that we've made thousands of them and we still do.
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So what are some of the big mistakes that either you guys are running across or that
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even amateur grillers like maybe myself, um, tend to make? What are some of those mistakes
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Um, a lot of times, okay, there's not enough seasoning, you know, season party. Um, before
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I put just about anything on the grill, it's going to get a heavy coating of salt and pepper.
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Um, no matter what, whether I'm going to put a rub on it or not. I mean, if I, if I have
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a rub, it's got a lot of salt in it. I might go light on the salt or not use the salt
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at all, but you want to season really well. Um, make sure the grill is good and
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hot. Um, one of the other big mistakes is, is, and, and the biggest problem with grilling
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is, you know, when we cook on the stove, we turn it to 300, we put something inside, it
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stays at 300 until we turn it off. Right. Or, you know, until the power company realized
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you didn't pay the bill or whatever. That's, you know, really there's very few things that's
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going to change that temperature. When we cook outside, we're, well, the thing we're
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looking for the most is consistency and we're doing it in the most inconsistent place we
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can. Right. On a summer day, when you open the grill and you close it, it doesn't take
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very long for the heat to build back up. Exactly. On a 20 degree day, you may have taken
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20 minutes of time of your cook for every time you open the grill. So that pork butt that
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you're going to cook for eight hours and you open it up five times, that was going to take
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nine and a half hours and everybody's hungry at seven. Right. Not 830. And it's 830. And
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you're like, man, I'm still, I'm still, uh, I'm still waiting. So, uh, you know, so that's,
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that's, you know, wind can have an impact, rain, you know, humidity, heat, all these things
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you're going to have to take into account and, and, and kind of plan for, um, and, you
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know, practice in basically. So, um, those are some of the big ones. I mean, I could go
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on, but, um, you know, people use lighter fluid and don't let it burn off. You shouldn't
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use it at all, but if you do let it burn off for 45 minutes, I love what's going to taste
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like it. You know, things like that. So what are the best ways you talk a lot about
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temperature? What are the best ways other than just leaving it alone? I'm sure it's
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probably the best way to do it, but what are some other ways that you can regulate the
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temperature? Well, if we're talking about like winter grilling, so, you know, you want
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to, uh, a wind, uh, windbreak is a big deal. You know, if you can move your grill, you
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know, over near like a, a fence or a shed or something like that, not too close. You
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don't want to burn down the fence or the shed, but a windbreak is a big deal. Um, and, and
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the, in the summertime or in, and for any grill, uh, it's vent control. It's, you know, the
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fire depends on how much air it gets. You open that sucker wide up or, you know, I think
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I, I, there's a post on my website. It was like, um, how I almost screwed up this brisket
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or something like that, where, where I had opened up the grill to mop, to put a mop on
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the, you know, put a mop sauce on my brisket. And I, I, I think I had a, about a year old
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son at the time and I heard him scream behind me. Oh yeah. And he'd fallen and I, you know,
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I scooped him up and I ran inside and, you know, and I, I got them all together and I
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sat on the couch and, and an hour later I realized the grill was still open and now my
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fire's raging hot, you know, and, and, and, and so it really nearly, you know, ruined
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that brisket. It, it came out good. It could have been better, but, um, you know, those kinds
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of things, you know, like, uh, you know, you left the, you left, leave those vents open
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because you're wanting the temperature to go up and you open it up pretty wide and
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then, yeah, they go up pretty fast, but then you don't cut them down. Then you're
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going to be screwed. Right. Yeah, I get that. What is the, uh, what's, I've heard that
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there's some differences between grilling and, and, you know, barbecue. What's, is there
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a difference? What's, are those words synonymous? Um, grilling is, is generally hot
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and fast. So you, you generally grill a steak, you generally grill shrimp, you, you know,
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you, you put it over a hot, hot, you know, burger. You don't, you know, you don't
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throw a burger in a 200 degree smoker and, you know, and come back three hours later.
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Right. Uh, people do that. The people, the reverse sear steak is a big thing now where
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you smoke it low for like 45 minutes and then sear it. And then sear it at the end.
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Okay. Uh, for the most part, you know, barbecue is kind of like the middle ground there. It's
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kind of cooking, you know, slower where smoking is, is, is the actual, the, the, is, is
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the far extreme. That's a low and slow, you know, it's 200 degrees. You know, a lot
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of people do 200 degrees. Um, I actually go a little hotter than that. Um, I, I started
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seeing it, you know, we're, we're seeing this proliferation of barbecue on TV with pit
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masters and stuff that a lot of these guys are cooking at three and three 50. And I'm
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like, you know what, if Myron Mixon is grilling his brisket at three 50, the hardest thing you
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can, you can cook that I think I can do at 300 too or 350. And so I cook all my stuff
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at three, 300. And so my briskets are done in, in six, seven hours, pork butts in five,
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six hours and, and, you know, blows people away. But, um, so it's more like instead of
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smoking and we're like doing it at the barbecue level, kind of, you know, a
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middle ground there, sort of medium heat pretty much though. I mean, they're all
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done on a grill or a barbecue grill. So that can be turned into a smoker for most
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part on just about any grill. So they're, they're somewhat interchangeable. The
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people that really argue it are, are the people that you just don't want to talk
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to because they're just, I mean, it doesn't matter at that point. You know, it's
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like really, you know, it's going into a grill. I know I'm smoking in it, but I'm
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still grill. Whatever, dude. You know what I mean? It comes out, it's going to
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taste delicious. Don't worry about, you know, the name I use to cook. Good name.
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Yeah, that's right. What, uh, what's the risk of turning up the heat? Like you
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said, you know, three, three 50, is it just the risk of, of it being dry or what
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do you run into when it comes to that? So what the whole point of, of barbecue or
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smoking is, is you take tough cuts of meat, you cook them slow and you break down
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the connected tissues and make them into tender cuts of meat. So it was a way to
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take cheap cuts and, and, and make them edible. Um, steak, right. It's tender
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already. It's delicious. You don't need to do it low and slow. Um, you can infuse
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it smoke flour. That's why you do the reverse sear. So that whole point is to
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cook it long enough to make it tender. Now, if you, everybody thought that in
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order to do that, right, it'd be 200 degrees and you know, you got to put your
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brisket in, um, the night before at about two o'clock in the morning, they have it
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done the next day by five. Um, because you need 15, 18 hours on it. But, but
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people found that if you raise that from 200 to three or three 50, you could
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dramatically cut down your time to, and, and still get that, break down the
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connective tissue, still get that, that smoke flavor. Um, and what people, where
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this kind of came about is people realize that after a couple, two to three
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hours, it's not taking on any more smoke. So at that point, what do you, why do you
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need to keep going that low? If you can break, get those connections of
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tissues. So, so infuse it with smoke. And what, what a lot of people are now
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doing is they're using a Texas crutch. You know what the Texas crutch is? No, I
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have no idea. Okay. So Texas crutch is aluminum foil. Okay. So you smoke it and
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you get to infuse the smoke flavor. You need to wrap it in foil with a little bit
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of liquid. The liquid could be beer, it could be honey, it could be wine, it
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could be syrup. It won't taste like any of those things. It'll pick up a little
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bit, but if you, if you slather it with maple syrup, it's not going to taste
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like syrup. Okay. I know it sounds nuts, but what you do is you need to wrap
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it in foil and it steams inside its own juices on the grill. You put it back
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on the grill and that hyper accelerates the breaking down of the connective
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tissues. So now you got the smoke, you got the connective tissues broken down.
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It's, it's, it's now tender as, as, as you need to be. Um, it doesn't get as good
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of a bark on it cause it gets kind of mushy. So you take it off the oil off, dry
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it, you know, then dry it, put it back on the grill to dry it out and get that bark
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back. Or you can actually sear it, put it right over, you know, give it, get a sear
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over the, over the hot coals, um, and, and, and get a nice char, but you've got
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all the things you need to make that a great, um, piece of, of tender, delicious
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It's funny cause you're talking all about efficiency now. And, you know, we think
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about efficiency in businesses or whatever it may be. And now we're talking about
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efficiency and grilling. And so that translates into every avenue of life, right?
00:16:59.060
Well, yeah. And it's not for me, the efficiency was I have, you know, when I started
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grilling, I, you know, I was, I didn't have any kids, you know, and I'd come up
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from work and my wife go, what do you want to eat? And I'm like, well, let's go
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through the freezer and pull something out and thaw it out. Then I'll throw it on the
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grill. We eat about nine 30, 10, you know, you kids, you can't eat at nine 30, you
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know? Right. Right. Um, so now they have three kids, you know, I gotta, I gotta kind
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of, you know, I can't, you know, be smoking all day long. Um, the part of those
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people who will never do it cause they want to just be, be out of the house to be by
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the grill. Honey, I got to watch this grill. I can't, you know, I'm going to be out
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here from nine o'clock in the morning until whatever. That's fine. But I can, I can
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get pretty close to the same results in a lot faster time. Although I'm not, I'm
00:17:38.980
cutting corners, but I'm not, I'm not taking any flavor away. And there's
00:17:43.680
people, there's some people that argue vehemently that I'm wrong. Um, but like I
00:17:47.240
said, uh, Myron Mixon's the one more money in barbecue than anybody. He smokes his
00:17:51.440
briskets at three 50. So I'm going to go with what that guy does. Right. You know, it's
00:17:55.920
funny you say that my, uh, my father-in-law, he built a smoker out of one of those big
00:17:59.760
50 gallon drums or whatever. So he built it. And, uh, when we get together as a
00:18:04.340
family, I think there's, I want to say there's like 15 or 18 grandkids and he'll
00:18:08.660
go out there with a book and his fold out chair and he'll go sit out there all
00:18:12.320
day. And, and just like you said, he's like, Hey, I'm watching the grill. I can't
00:18:15.100
be up here. I got to watch the grill. So I see what you're saying when it comes to
00:18:19.000
that. You know what? That's part of like when people get their first Kamado grill,
00:18:21.760
which is one of these ceramic cookers, when they get that grill, um, they're
00:18:26.360
actually kind of bored because you kind of set it and forget it. You don't have to play
00:18:30.600
with the vents and, you know, right. And Kohl's or whatever. And when you first get
00:18:34.320
that, you're like, well, um, Hmm. Um, what do I do? Uh, yeah, I'm, that's good. I,
00:18:41.480
um, well, uh, yeah, shoot. If my wife finds out about this, I'm gonna have to go help
00:18:47.440
inside. Um, so yeah, so there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a sort of a negative to
00:18:55.260
getting the Kamado. If you want to, uh, keep using the grills and excuse not to have to,
00:19:00.140
uh, you know, help out around the house. Right, right. You've got to balance that
00:19:03.700
game for sure. Right. So he does pork tenderloins. Um, he's done turkey as well,
00:19:08.940
which is incredible. What are some other meats that, uh, that you can smoke slow
00:19:13.000
like that? Well, you can smoke anything. I mean, we do, I'm looking at something
00:19:16.180
right now on the website. It's a grilled chuck roast stew. And what we do was to take
00:19:20.040
two chuck roasts and we put them over a, um, um, roasting pan on a roasting rack and we
00:19:26.020
put, we fill the roasting pan with the vegetables and broth and, and put the, you know, put
00:19:31.840
the meat over the top of it. So the meat smokes and as it's smoking and it's cooking, it's
00:19:35.940
dripping down into that, that pan. And then at the very end, we take them off and we submerge
00:19:41.740
them into the, into the, the sauce. And it's like a pot, it's like a grilled pot roast
00:19:45.900
and it's, it's outstanding. I mean, it's, I'm sure it sounds so good. Chuck roast is cheap
00:19:50.100
and it comes out so tender. You can literally make it like brisket sandwiches out of it.
00:19:53.700
I mean, it's great. Um, and then, um, I'm trying to think what other weird stuff, you
00:19:58.300
know, um, tri-tip, um, is a great, so have you heard of tri-tip? Yeah, absolutely. So
00:20:05.120
yeah. So for those that don't know, tri-tip is the, uh, bottom point of the sirloin roast
00:20:08.940
and it's kind of comes like a triangular shape, which is why it's called tri-tip. Um, that's
00:20:14.180
was popularized first in Santa Maria, California, where they cook with a lot of red
00:20:18.900
oak. And, um, and it's steak is so expensive right now and tri-tips are going up too, but
00:20:26.240
I can feed six couples on 15 bucks a tri-tip. Um, like six couples, three couples, six people
00:20:32.280
on 15 bucks with a tri-tip. And what I love to do with that is a reverse sear. I smoke it
00:20:36.780
for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, depending on the size, get it to about 110, 115 inside
00:20:43.460
and then I sear the bejesus out of it. Takes it up to about 130, um, 140. So in the, and
00:20:50.800
on the outside, it's, it's, it's kind of, it's medium rare to medium in the middle. It's
00:20:54.920
pink. So I can kind of cover all the gamuts for everybody. Um, so, you know, we, I've
00:21:00.040
been doing a lot of, um, like I did, I just did a, uh, sourdough round last night on the
00:21:04.580
grill. I took a sourdough piece of sourdough bread, crisscross cut it, but not all the way
00:21:09.100
through to the bottom, about an inch, made like inch squares on the top. Right. In
00:21:13.420
between all those little crevices, I shoved in, uh, bacon, crump, crispy bacon, about a
00:21:19.360
half a pound of cheese. And then I took a, a quarter stick of butter and a teaspoon of
00:21:24.120
ranch dressing dip. Mix, I mean the powder, mix, I didn't melt with the butter and then
00:21:29.060
drizzle the butter all over the top of that. Throw it on the grill for like 15 minutes
00:21:33.000
covered in foil. So it, it heats up all on the inside and then you take it off and you
00:21:36.980
kick up the smoke, take the foil off, kick up the smoke and it browns on the top and
00:21:41.320
picks up the smoke flavor. It doesn't need a lot because it's bread. It's really
00:21:44.300
porous. Right. Take that sucker off and set it down in the middle of the table and
00:21:47.940
it's like watching piranha feast on a... Oh, sure. I mean, we've done it with a rye
00:21:53.560
bread and, um, and fresh dill. So like a rye bread and dill dip. Um, I did it with a
00:21:58.040
sourdough loaf last night and, and, you know, just regular, regular like Colby Jack cheese.
00:22:03.080
So you can do all kinds of combinations. I mean, we grill, we grill all kinds of
00:22:07.600
crazy. I grill lettuce. Really? Oh man. One of the most popular posts was a lettuce.
00:22:12.220
Is that right? So, so I, somebody tells me they grill lettuce. This is on that, with
00:22:16.560
that football website, right? And I'm giving this guy all kinds of grief. I'm like, you
00:22:19.380
grill lettuce? You need to turn in your man card or what? And he goes, no, no, it's
00:22:24.220
good. Just try it. Just try it. So one day, Mother's Day here at my house, both sides of
00:22:30.040
the family are over. We're grilling. I got, you know, a whole grill full of, you
00:22:32.780
know, dogs and burgers and brats and, and I, um, I go inside, I got this one head of
00:22:37.540
romaine lettuce and you peel off all the louder leaves. You make, leave one giant
00:22:41.520
heart of romaine. Okay. And then you slice it down the middle lengthwise and you
00:22:46.420
drizzle it with olive oil, salt and black pepper and a little granulated garlic
00:22:50.400
and that's it. Take it out, throw it over a hot, hot grill and just char it all the
00:22:55.160
way around. And it takes, doesn't take very long at all. Yeah. Take it off the grill,
00:22:58.840
set it down, um, sprinkle it with just some Asiago cheese and hand, hand people
00:23:04.240
the forks. So I'm walking out with this seasoned lettuce from, from my, my back
00:23:10.300
door through my kitchen, out my back door. And all along the way, I'm getting the
00:23:13.700
same grief I dilled out to. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. What are you doing? I'm like,
00:23:17.080
I'm gonna grill lettuce. Like, shut up. You're grilling lettuce. I said it, I
00:23:20.540
grilled it. I set it down. Only like five people got by it because it was gone that
00:23:23.680
fast. Really? And I was disappointed that more people didn't get to taste it because I
00:23:27.840
got grief about it until everybody came over the next time and I grilled it for
00:23:30.920
everybody. My, uh, my wife grills asparagus and it's very similar to what you're
00:23:36.020
talking about. And it is so good. We had it last night, in fact. Yeah. Love it.
00:23:39.440
Yeah. I do a little balsamic on there and, uh, and, and, and kind of almost like a
00:23:43.220
marinade and I do shavings of cheese. But this lettuce thing, I mean, it was, it was
00:23:48.100
a number one post for, for years on the website. I mean, the, the, the grilled romaine,
00:23:51.600
it's just, it's just crazy. And, um, you know, we do it, we do grilling demos and
00:23:56.560
we do grilling classes. Um, and people see me do this and they're floored and they
00:24:02.060
can't believe how, how good it is. And see what the thing, why it's good is that
00:24:06.100
lettuce has sugars in it that they're so subtle, you can't taste them, which is why
00:24:09.800
they're just, it's just a vehicle to get the, you know, the, the, the Caesar salad
00:24:13.280
dressing and the croutons to your mouth. Right. Right. Right. But when you, when you
00:24:17.060
char it, you caramelize those sugars and it actually brings out those, the flavor
00:24:20.340
that, that was not there. You just don't notice it until you char it. Interesting.
00:24:23.840
So that's why it's delicious. So it's right on the front page of the website. I
00:24:27.060
mean, it's just, it's great. It's, it's something we do. I literally do it all the
00:24:31.460
time. Anytime I'm doing a steak, I'll do steaks. When I pull my steaks off to rest,
00:24:35.820
I throw the lettuce on. It takes four or five minutes for my steak to rest. That's as long
00:24:39.400
as it takes to grill the lettuce. And I've got instant cool side dish to go along with
00:24:42.960
my steaks. Yeah, that's cool. We'll make, we'll make sure we make a link on the, uh,
00:24:46.780
on the show notes to that article so we can check that out. It sounds like it's
00:24:50.040
just a ton of trial and error, like willing to mess up, willing to, to botch
00:24:53.020
a few things, but in order, it sounds to me like, yeah, eating, eating the food that
00:24:57.960
we're cooking is, is important, but just as important as the experiment and the
00:25:02.560
process of cooking it. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know,
00:25:05.340
like let's talk about ribs and the foiling. So like one of the methods I learned
00:25:08.260
on that, the football website was you gotta do the three, two, one method. So you smoke
00:25:12.200
your ribs for three hours and you throw them in foil for two hours and you put
00:25:15.100
them back on the grill for one hour. And what that makes is really overdone, super
00:25:18.820
fall off the bone ribs. And that's fine. Those are good ribs. You know, I'll eat
00:25:22.720
those, but I don't, I don't prefer them that done. I like them, um, more competition.
00:25:26.480
So they have a, they're, they're tender, but they have a clean bite. You know, like
00:25:29.300
take one bite and the bone falls out of the meat. Right. And, and so I, I kept playing
00:25:34.040
with that method. I'm like, I, I don't want these, this, this overdone. So I kept cutting
00:25:37.940
it back. And then finally I just came down to, you know what, I'm just going to raise
00:25:40.160
the temperature to 300 and I cook my baby back two hours straight. I don't do
00:25:44.080
anything. I don't move them. I don't touch them. I don't, I don't do anything. I
00:25:47.960
just put them on for two hours, almost exactly two hours. The bones are peaking
00:25:50.960
out about, about, you know, a third to a half an inch and I know they're
00:25:54.040
perfectly done and I take them inside. Um, you know, but that's the thing. I kept
00:25:59.320
hearing this three, two, one method. I was like, you know, it's too long. I'm
00:26:01.520
going to try three, one, one. And they were still too long. And then, you know, two
00:26:04.860
and a half, one, and I kept, kept playing with it. I, when I first did my first
00:26:08.960
brisket, I did one a week for about five weeks, um, to, to perfect it. And
00:26:14.320
like my family was like so sick of brisket. I'm like, yeah, but that was
00:26:18.720
before you guys, are you guys grilling every night though? I mean, it sounds
00:26:21.960
like you're doing a ton. No, well, there's three of us and, um, I don't like
00:26:25.840
I, I grilled, I grilled yesterday. Um, I grill, I grill about once a week if I, if
00:26:31.280
I'm lucky. What we do is, uh, my cousin, dad and I will get together about once a
00:26:36.000
month and all three, and we'll just get it at one house and we'll just grill
00:26:38.740
like six, seven recipes. And my goal is to have a post up a week. And so if we
00:26:44.060
can get six, seven recipes and, and, and I can have that rolling out and that way
00:26:47.480
if we, if we miss a few couple of weeks before the next one, the next monthly
00:26:51.060
meeting or so, then I still have content to throw up there and, and, you know,
00:26:55.100
have ready. Let's talk about wood. Cause I think you mentioned, did you say red
00:26:59.620
oak? I think is what you said a little bit ago. Is there other types of woods that
00:27:03.520
you would recommend that we cook with that, that, um, brings out the flavor
00:27:06.900
enhances the flavor that much more? Yeah. Well basically, so yeah, I have the,
00:27:09.820
the actual, the most popular post on the website, which is not anywhere near the
00:27:12.480
front page, but it's, it's, it's the smokewoods post. So I just took, um, looked
00:27:16.760
around the web at every list of smokewood and kind of combined it in my own. And I
00:27:19.800
still think it's the biggest list. I'm not, I haven't researched that in a while,
00:27:23.040
but, um, basically there are certain rules like, um, any fruit wood will work even if
00:27:29.220
it's like an ornamental tree. So like, uh, um, a Bradford Cleveland pear.
00:27:33.300
I mean, you're not eating those pears, those little, you know, you're not eating
00:27:36.360
those things, but it's, you can, you can cook with that or like a double blossom
00:27:39.440
cherry or a crab apple. It's just almost identical to apple wood. Peach, you know,
00:27:45.560
I love, I love peach is probably my favorite pear. I love too. Then of course you've
00:27:49.520
got your hardwood. So, you know, oak is great. Um, red oak is, is, it makes a really
00:27:54.300
nice smoke ring. Pecan is great with beef. Hickory is kind of good with everything,
00:27:58.940
but can be overpowering. So if you're not ready for the, you don't want that much
00:28:02.120
smoke, I cut it with like some apple or some pear to kind of tone it down.
00:28:05.980
Fruitwoods are usually a little milder than the, than the, than the hardwoods.
00:28:09.860
Some people argue that the wood's got to be aged, you know, it's going to be super
00:28:13.640
all the way dry. Um, again, I'm going to quote Myron Mixon on this and he, he goes
00:28:17.800
and gets the, uh, freshest, um, greenest peach wood. It's, he likes the sap that's
00:28:23.020
still in the wood. Oh, right. With it. So again, I'm going to go with the, you know,
00:28:26.620
he's one of the icons of barbecue. So, um, I've, I've cooked, I've done it. I, uh,
00:28:30.760
I cooked with, with, uh, a branch off of a Bradford pear. We cut off that morning
00:28:35.680
and cooked it that evening. And I cooked for a, uh, uh, the food editor, uh, the
00:28:39.240
local paper. So who has got one heck of a pallet and he didn't say, Oh, is this
00:28:43.740
green wood? You know? So really? Yeah. So he didn't know. Yeah. People will argue
00:28:47.400
that. And I'm like, I guarantee you couldn't decide if I put, you know, five fruit or
00:28:53.020
five, uh, green and five, uh, you know, seasoned woods in front of you, meals in
00:28:56.840
front of you that were smoked with that. Nobody would be able to nail half of
00:28:59.980
them. Yeah. We've used, um, peach, we've used pecan, cedar, I think is maybe one that
00:29:05.780
we've used. I don't know. Cedar is for planking. You don't want to smoke, um, too
00:29:10.100
long with, with a, with, with a basically a pine, you know, cedar is kind of, right.
00:29:15.780
So you're planking and a lot of the, what's the flavor from the plank is not
00:29:18.940
really from the smoke. It's from the oils. So, uh, and you're, you know, you're
00:29:22.260
putting salmon on there for like, you know, a half an hour. You're not
00:29:24.900
smoking, um, a brisket for 15 hours with cedar. You, right. You wouldn't want
00:29:29.540
that. So where do you get this wood? I mean, some of those are local for us.
00:29:33.380
Peach and pecan are local here. Um, where does somebody get access to those woods
00:29:38.180
if they're not local? How do you get your hands on that stuff? Um, well, you can
00:29:42.700
order it online and you pay a boatload on shipping. I mean, I bet I pay a lot. Um,
00:29:47.180
there's a place here in town. Um, uh, St. Louis home fires has a great selection.
00:29:52.220
I don't know where they're getting it from. Um, but they've got to just, I mean,
00:29:55.220
apricot and, and orange and lemon and, you know, cause he's, he's sipping up,
00:30:00.020
shipping up by the pallet. So he's getting, you know, cheaper. Right. And he's got,
00:30:03.400
you know, grapevines and, you know, all this great, great woods. So I, when I go
00:30:06.680
there, I mean, I, you know, I don't spend less than a hundred bucks on smokewoods,
00:30:09.200
you know, apricot, nectarine, and I mean, you know, all this great stuff and plum.
00:30:14.240
Um, um, but you know, it's hit or miss. You know, I had somebody from Australia
00:30:19.060
told me about some wood and, um, and, uh, he told me, you got to try this, this
00:30:23.260
wood from New Zealand. And he shipped me some, um, to my cousin's, uh, um, post
00:30:28.200
office box. I'm like, you know, he's like, you sure you want to ship it a post
00:30:31.760
office box? I'm like, you're a guy on the internet and you're asking for my
00:30:34.820
address. Yeah. Right. That's a good plan. Right. So he's, he's never given me the
00:30:39.080
wood. This has been about six months since he's gotten it. I'm like, yeah, I want to
00:30:41.940
try this, whatever this is. I can't remember the name. It saved my life.
00:30:44.240
And there's also, there's a Hawaiian wood that's like called Kiwa or Kauai or
00:30:48.980
something like Ki-I-W-K-I-W-A-I or something like that that I want to try and
00:30:52.720
never had. And that's what I'm intrigued now about is I want to try some of that,
00:30:56.820
um, like the, the, the, the South Africans, they, they, they, they call barbecue
00:31:00.460
braai, B-R-A-A-I. And they have certain woods there you just can't get here that
00:31:04.980
I'd like to try. You know what I mean? And Australian is, I mean, that's the kind of
00:31:07.660
stuff that I'm interested in now. I've tried most of the main, main ones, but you
00:31:12.040
know, that's what I'm interested in. Yeah. Getting a little bit more exotic,
00:31:15.240
right? Although I don't know if I want, ignorance is bliss though. I don't know if
00:31:18.120
I want to, uh, you know, try it and go, God, this is the best stuff ever. And I
00:31:21.560
got to, and then you're stuck. I'm shipping it in from South Africa. That's right.
00:31:26.020
It could turn into a really expensive hobby at that point. So I'm going to, I'm
00:31:30.100
going to bring up a question that, um, it may be blasphemous. I don't know to you,
00:31:33.900
but, uh, we've got to address it. We've been talking a lot about wood and I know
00:31:37.840
there's maybe a trend or I've seen a lot more of some of like these electric pellet
00:31:42.480
type grills. Give me your thoughts on those. Um, you know what? Smoke is smoke. So if
00:31:48.200
people say, you know, it should be charcoal. Well, if you're getting the flavor from the
00:31:53.540
charcoal into your food, you're doing it wrong. Okay. Most charcoal people are using
00:31:59.140
their briquettes. They're filled with petroleum products and fillers. Right. Okay. Well, that's
00:32:03.180
where they came from, right? I mean like Ford factories, you know? Right. Um, and, and
00:32:07.540
I'll tell you, so we were, we've been using a lump for a long time. We use a local product
00:32:11.100
here from St. Louis called Rockwood, a really great stuff. It's all a hundred percent hardwood
00:32:15.140
and it's really good lump charcoal, but we've been using it for a while. We were teaching
00:32:18.700
a class at a local cooking school and they didn't carry the Rockwood and they asked if we
00:32:23.700
would use the stuff they carried. And it was a brickhead and we were lighting these
00:32:28.140
charcoal grills inside. Now I don't recommend this and don't do it. We were
00:32:33.080
giving the okay from a, a, um, fire chief literally came in and did an inspection.
00:32:38.200
We had these two grills underneath giant industrial hoods. Oh, right. Right. And they
00:32:43.900
said, you're fine. You'll be okay. Well, not really. The hoods couldn't keep up with
00:32:47.460
the smoke. So we had to take them out. But while we were lighting them inside, I was
00:32:51.360
like, what is that smell? And I'm like, it's the charcoal. And I, I, I had been using brick
00:32:55.940
this lump for over a year, about a year at the time. And when I liked this stuff, I
00:33:00.420
let it outside. So I don't really get a good whiff of it, but it was kind of concentrated
00:33:03.300
inside. I was like, man, that smells terrible. So we literally had to take these lit grills,
00:33:08.220
carry them outside, down the stairs and outside. And that kind of told me that, Hey, I'm never
00:33:12.580
going to really use that, the, the standard briquettes anymore because while yes, it is
00:33:17.140
kind of blown away outside, but when you close the grill, it's concentrated around your
00:33:21.160
food. Right. That's not good. So the pellets are cleaner, you know, it's, it's got more
00:33:27.200
pure smoke of the, of the smoke you want to have in your meat. So I, I've never actually
00:33:32.040
cooked on a pellet smoker. I have no problem with them. I'm not a, I'm not a snob against
00:33:35.940
them. Um, and you know, I, I use gas a lot and I use, um, gas basically during the week
00:33:41.940
and charcoal, my lump charcoal and my Kamado on the weekend. And that's kind of, that's
00:33:46.780
kind of the way it is that the pellets, you know, whatever. I mean, the, the bigger thing
00:33:50.120
that freaks people out are the, uh, the, the, just the gas or the gas or electric smokers
00:33:54.300
that all they really have is an element in a box and a metal box. Right. Right.
00:33:58.320
So they put a pan, it looks like a pipe pan in the bottom and throw in a chunk of
00:34:02.040
wood. And I'm like, well, that's not really drilling. It's still smoking. You
00:34:07.680
know what I mean? Right. You know, I, yeah, it's, it looks kind of like a, a
00:34:11.260
little, uh, you know, a little closet, you know, a little, a little wine fridge
00:34:14.080
sometimes. But if it's putting good smoke and it's keeping good temperatures, that's
00:34:19.100
all, that's a goal. Who cares if it looks like a wine fridge? Yeah. As long as it
00:34:22.720
works and it produces a good result. Exactly. So let's talk about you. I
00:34:26.420
think you, you mentioned that you do some competitions. Is that right? We
00:34:30.200
don't, we don't compete. It doesn't, it doesn't behoove us. If we, if we, if we
00:34:35.320
win a competition, they're going to go, well, you get this website, you're
00:34:38.180
right for charter. Of course you should win. Right. If we lose, they're going to go,
00:34:40.540
what the hell's wrong with you? Right. So we don't, what we do is we throw a
00:34:44.240
competition every year, um, that benefits like, um, either like first
00:34:48.180
responders or, or veterans or, you know, or, you know, so soldiers that we've, we've
00:34:53.080
done wounded warrior. Uh, we've done local, um, um, fire departments. We're doing a
00:34:57.300
local, um, volunteer fire department this year and we throw basically a charity
00:35:01.060
competition for them. And that's how we kind of get our fix on the competition,
00:35:06.000
right? Organized. Right. So you're hosting them. And we're there and we're around
00:35:10.060
those guys and we're, you know, we're chatting up and we're sampling and all that.
00:35:13.640
Um, but no, we're not competing. And the other thing is we, we just don't, we don't
00:35:18.320
have the time. I mean, I don't have the time to do it with, um, you, you, you, the
00:35:22.900
thing about competition is, is timing. You've got to, uh, you know, like a KCBS
00:35:27.760
competition, you, you're turning in four categories in two hours. So every 30 minutes
00:35:31.960
you're turning in something that may have taken you 12 hours of smoke. Wow. Yeah.
00:35:35.620
You know, and, and you've got to get it to with, to write on time and get it to the
00:35:39.280
judges and perfect, you know, I don't, I don't need that extra stress in my
00:35:42.980
life. The guys that do it, man, they're all about it. And I, you know, if I had no
00:35:47.320
kids at home and, you know, and, and, you know, at the time I would probably do it
00:35:51.480
because I think there's a rush to it, but you know, right now, you know, I don't
00:35:54.940
have time to practice my timing, like, you know, three nights a week before
00:35:58.260
competition. I get that. I get that. I'm with you. What do you think separates the
00:36:03.160
guys who are competing, whether it's in the things that you're holding or some of
00:36:05.980
these other competitions, obviously flavors, important tenderness. What are some
00:36:09.420
other things, factors that are separating the winners from the losers in those
00:36:12.420
competitions? A lot of, a lot of it, a lot of it really isn't. It's a, it's a,
00:36:15.960
it's the lowest score on the sheet is presentation, but I'm going to tell you
00:36:19.860
that's, that, that goes a lot towards what people perceive the flavor to be.
00:36:25.560
Oh, I bet. And I just got to, I just was able to spend some time with Oklahoma Joe
00:36:29.360
who owns Oklahoma Joe's. His name is Joe Davidson and he owns Oklahoma Joe's
00:36:34.260
restaurants. He used to own Oklahoma Joe barbecue pits that he sold at Charbroil.
00:36:37.820
Um, he cooked for us and then he talked to us and he said, you know what? It's all
00:36:43.800
going to taste pretty good. You, you make yours prettier than the next guy and it's
00:36:46.700
going to make a difference. Um, really? And the other thing is you can't make it
00:36:51.140
sweet enough. Um, Johnny Trigg says that his, he won't eat his, his competition
00:36:56.560
ribs are too, the too damn sweet. He said, I won't eat them. They're too damn sweet.
00:37:00.580
Really? But your judge is only taking one. If you're lucky, two bites.
00:37:04.520
Yeah. So they're not getting the whole rib. So you got to load it up with so much
00:37:08.480
flavor that that one bite is better than the other guy's one bite. You know, if
00:37:12.060
you're going to eat a half a slab of ribs, you know, you don't want to, you don't
00:37:15.060
want it to be, you know, going to die bed of coma, you know, halfway through. But
00:37:18.600
I'm serious, man. These guys loaded up. It's, it's all about, and then you got to
00:37:23.220
load up with sugar and then you have to balance it out with, with some, some savory to
00:37:27.220
really nail it right. So, you know, it's a, it's a juggling act. So, you know,
00:37:31.240
that's the, the biggest things is, is just, you know, what's a great rib that you eat
00:37:35.720
a half a slab is not the same as a great rib in a competition. And that's, part of
00:37:40.320
me, I don't like that part of the competition because it's not really what's the better,
00:37:45.360
what's going to be a better. Right. What's a better meal. Right. If you wanted to go up
00:37:49.640
against me and your competition, I'm like, let's do this. We'll go, we'll get a couple
00:37:53.080
of judges, but they got to eat a half a slab of each of our ribs. I'm going to crush
00:37:56.900
you because by the time they're halfway through that, that rib, they're going to be,
00:38:00.740
you know, going to need an insulin injection. And for me, they're going to be like, that's
00:38:03.860
a real good rib. Makes sense. I've given the competition guys grief. They make great
00:38:07.740
stuff. They really do. But they, they know they have to load it up with more sweetness
00:38:10.600
than they would necessarily serve otherwise. So, uh, just part of the game. It sounds like
00:38:14.860
yeah. Let's go back to something you mentioned earlier. You talked about rubs. Is there a
00:38:20.300
secret to creating the right rub or having the right procedure or when you put it on or
00:38:24.980
how you apply it? What's the secret to a rub? Well, first make a good rub. You need,
00:38:28.780
you need balance. Like I said earlier, you need a balance, uh, sweet and savory, you know,
00:38:32.720
um, spicy and you know, not spicy basically. So you want to, um, you want to have a nuanced
00:38:38.360
rub that has more than just one flavor profile. You know, if you're going to be using a lot
00:38:41.860
of brown sugar, you want a lot of, uh, paprika and, and garlic powder or whatever you're going
00:38:45.840
to use. Um, high quality ingredients is obviously a big deal, but, um, I like to me, I don't sauce
00:38:52.360
very often. I just like to, I like to put a rub on my ribs or, or whatever, and then
00:38:56.980
throw them on the grill and, and, and smoke them and leave them on like that. So there
00:39:01.840
are a couple of tricks though, especially with the ribs. So when you, when you season
00:39:06.420
your ribs, um, after you skin the back, skin the memory, you want to season on the bone
00:39:12.080
side first. Okay. And the bone side is kind of concaved so that when you flip it over,
00:39:17.300
those bones will keep the meat up off the cutting board. Oh, right. Yeah. If you season
00:39:22.260
the meat side first, when you flip it over, it'll take all that rub off. It'll stick to
00:39:26.720
the cutting board. You'll have a stripe down the middle of your ribs where, where it all
00:39:30.020
right. And you have to reapply. Right. Okay. Put it on the bottom first and then put it
00:39:34.640
on the bottom and, and lay it on nice and thick and let it sit there for a minute. Don't
00:39:39.600
flip them over right away because it hasn't stuck yet. So let, let the, the, you know,
00:39:43.460
hit you, hit with the salt and then the rub. And what will happen is the salt will draw
00:39:47.620
some moisture out and that moisture will bind the rub to the, to the ribs. Interesting.
00:39:53.080
Then flip them over and do the other side, do the same thing and let them sit there before
00:39:58.020
you throw them on the grill. Interesting. I like that. That'll be a good trick. We'll
00:40:01.140
have to, we'll have to see what we can do there. I'm wondering if there's a, uh, maybe
00:40:04.620
a favorite recipe or a simple recipe that you can leave us with as a teaser for us to come
00:40:09.060
back and visit, uh, what you're doing over at Grilling Fools. Favorite recipe, simple,
00:40:13.140
let's see here. Um, um, you know, and I do weird stuff like, like one of my favorite
00:40:17.400
things to grill is crostinis and it's the thing that, that, that my, my family requests
00:40:22.260
more than anything is the crostini and, um, it's interesting. Crostini is basically, okay,
00:40:28.360
so I was unemployed just about 12 years ago and I was between jobs and, uh, I was watching
00:40:34.160
cooking shows a lot and I flipped to Wolfgang Puck and he was just at the very end of the
00:40:39.420
show. I didn't see him prepared and he goes, okay, now we're going to pull the crostini
00:40:42.780
out of the oven and crostini is just, it's just Italian for toasted bread. All right.
00:40:48.160
Right. And I just saw the finest product. I had no idea how he cooked it. And it was
00:40:51.460
pre, pre internet really. You couldn't just go and, you know, pull up. Yeah. You couldn't
00:40:55.200
just pull up how you did it. Right. So I made it on the grill and I, at the time dad and
00:40:59.740
I were doing guy night about once a month, which is steaks bigger in your foot, you know,
00:41:03.820
you know, beer, wine, and in like, you know, a movie with lots of explosions and, you know,
00:41:08.140
and, and gun battles. Right. Manly stuff. Yeah. And, and I made these for him. He's
00:41:12.100
like, these are incredible. And literally I have not really changed the recipe except
00:41:16.040
for a couple of minor tweaks in, in like a dozen years. And basically you take a baguette
00:41:20.380
of soft sided bread. It can't be a crunchy bread already cause it's a little bit. Okay.
00:41:24.880
So like a baguette, um, of sourdough baguette is my favorite. You slice it about, about a little,
00:41:31.180
like an inch and a quarter thick. And so you have a bunch of basically pucks of bread and
00:41:36.560
you, you pour a little oil into a bowl and you dunk each of the flat sides of the bread
00:41:41.060
into the oil to basically grease them. And this will keep them from burning. You hit, hit
00:41:45.800
them with black pepper, some basil and, and, and about a teaspoon, a teaspoon of minced garlic
00:41:54.220
per slice. Wow. Okay. Sounds like a lot. Now hold on. Yeah. Now, now you go slice up
00:41:59.880
some, some Havarti cheese and set that to the side. Now take these out to the grill
00:42:04.560
and you put them, put them on the grill with the toppings up on the hot side and just toast
00:42:10.520
them on the bottom. This will only take like 60 seconds. So don't even go inside for a
00:42:13.520
beer. If you walk away from these more than, more than, more than 60 seconds, you'll burn
00:42:17.000
the crap out of them. They're done. The oil makes it last from being burnt in 10 seconds
00:42:20.480
to about 60 seconds. Toast them on the bottom, then flip them over. This is why you put so
00:42:24.960
much garlic. Okay. You're going to lose a bunch of it. Flip them over and just toast
00:42:28.460
them on the top side. Again, 60 seconds. Take them up, put them on the side of the grill
00:42:33.920
with no heat. So you have two stone grilling here. Kohl's or burners on one side, nothing
00:42:38.500
on the other. Put them topping side back up again on the other side. Put a couple of
00:42:42.760
slices of that Havarti cheese on each one. Close the lid. Open the lid two minutes later.
00:42:47.140
That cheese will now have melted on the top and drizzled, started to go down the side,
00:42:50.640
sort of like a, like a French onion, French onion, like a, yeah, like a soup.
00:42:56.620
Yeah, yeah. French onion soup. Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. Yeah. And then take
00:43:00.360
them off the grill and let them sit for about a minute because they're like molten lava at
00:43:05.040
And then serve them there. They're crunchy on the outside and they're soft in the middle
00:43:09.200
and there's just garlic and cheese and basil and it just, it's literally, the only thing
00:43:16.200
I've changed over the years is that instead of just slicing them straight, I slice them at
00:43:20.160
an angle on a bias and it gives them much more surface area. Okay. Yeah, interesting.
00:43:25.360
But if you're doing it for a crowd, you get more by going straight. Yeah, straight down.
00:43:29.680
And then my wife likes dill. So I changed it up by putting, instead of basil down, I put
00:43:35.480
dill and then put dill Havarti on top. So about, you know, there's about a third of the people
00:43:41.000
that don't like the dill, but most of them do. So.
00:43:44.180
Cool. Well, Scott, we're winding down on time. I do have a couple other questions. The first
00:43:48.960
one, just for the sake of time, is there an article that I can connect to on your site about
00:43:53.940
how to properly clean your grill? I don't have that because.
00:43:58.720
Yeah. You know what? That's, that's usually what people do when they go to store it away
00:44:03.180
for like the winter, you know? And I don't. So.
00:44:07.660
You know, I, I, you know, what I tell people is just, you know, before and after you're done
00:44:13.760
grilling, give it a brush. Okay. You could probably get away with only doing one or the other,
00:44:19.840
but I tend to do both, you know, like I, you know, I brush it down before I brush it
00:44:23.920
down after. And, uh, and that's pretty much all you need to do. So there's a, there's
00:44:28.620
a new grill brush that Charbroil makes it that doesn't require the grill to be hot and
00:44:32.360
it cleans really well. So it looks like a funky toothbrush almost the way that the bristles
00:44:36.380
are angled. And then, and then of course, you know, you want to do it. Sometimes you've
00:44:39.980
got a lot of, you know, like barbecue sauce or sauces that are on there that are kind
00:44:43.320
of caked on there. You want to get it hot and hit with a wire brush, but that's dangerous
00:44:46.820
too. Cause they're finding these wire brushes are made so cheap now that the, uh, the metal
00:44:50.640
wires are coming off and people are swallowing them. So be careful. Um, but if you, if you
00:44:56.220
keep it good and clean, so that stuff doesn't really build up like that, it's hard for a
00:45:00.800
piece of wire to hide in that, that the gunk because you've kept it clean. So I would just
00:45:05.680
say, keep it clean and keep it, keep it going. And if you, if you are going to shut it down
00:45:09.060
over the year, I would, I would hit it with some oil before I do to keep it from brusting
00:45:11.940
over the, over the year. It sounds like what you're telling me is that the best way
00:45:16.100
to not worry about cleaning your grill real heavy like that is never having to worry about
00:45:19.520
putting it away and keep it out all year long. Right. Cause you know, when you put it away,
00:45:23.000
you put it away for that, you're going to, you're, you're risking, risking rust really
00:45:26.360
bad. You know, like if you have a gas grill, the, the, the, the death to a gas grill is
00:45:32.180
the, the grease that drips out of the meat and, um, and hits those, those components, you
00:45:37.160
know, and, and it, it erodes them. And then, you know, if you're kind of keep using them,
00:45:40.820
it'll burn that stuff up. And if you let it, you know, you cook for the last time
00:45:43.580
and you put it away, that grease is just going to sit there and do its magic there for a year
00:45:47.660
and yeah, and eat that stuff. Yeah. Makes sense. Well, Scott, this has been an awesome
00:45:51.660
conversation. We've covered a lot of topics. If, uh, the men that are listening, want to
00:45:54.920
connect with you, learn more about grilling fools and what you guys are doing. How do we
00:45:58.320
connect with you? Well, you can obviously go to grill and fools.com G R I L L I N fools.com.
00:46:03.420
We're informal here. There's no second G on that grilling. Uh, we're on Facebook. We're on
00:46:07.900
Twitter. Uh, we're on Pinterest. I know it sounds crazy. There are guys, there are guys
00:46:12.580
on Pinterest and I get, I get a ton, a ton of ideas from Pinterest. I'm telling you,
00:46:16.720
it's, it's the best place to get ideas other than my website on grilling. And, um, I'm on
00:46:20.840
Instagram now too. And, um, literally, um, if you want to see what I'm doing on a daily
00:46:25.840
basis, I usually put up 10 or 15 things on Instagram. I do. I'll pull up something from
00:46:30.160
the archive. Um, I put that, that, that bread I grilled yesterday, I put that on all day
00:46:34.400
today. Yesterday I put up some of the sickest crosshatch grill marks you've ever seen on
00:46:39.620
a steak. And I took video of me flipping it. So it's real, like, you know, here it is.
00:46:43.760
There's only one. Oh yeah. Real time. Yeah. And that 15 second window you have.
00:46:46.820
There's only one take. I can't like, you know, go ahead and just go pitch this $20 steak
00:46:51.040
and start over. You know, I, I, so, and I did it, I did it on both sides. There's a video.
00:46:55.520
So it's, it's basically it's, it's, you know, Facebook, it's grilling fools. Pinterest is
00:46:59.500
grilling fools. Um, Instagram is grilling fools, but on Twitter, it's grilling fool.
00:47:03.520
I started it before we were grilling fools.com and I already had a following. So it's still
00:47:08.080
grilling fool. But yeah, I saw that you were on Instagram, um, this morning, in fact, so
00:47:12.160
I've connected with you there. And so, yeah, the food looks delicious. I'm going to be jumping
00:47:15.460
on your website, getting some recipes for me this summer. Scott, I really appreciate your
00:47:19.280
time and you being on the show and sharing some insights about how to, uh, be better at
00:47:23.200
the grill. Hey man, I appreciate you having me on. I could do this, you know, we can, we
00:47:26.260
do this weekly if you wanted to. We might, we might need to, that'll work. Let's do it.
00:47:31.220
I'd love to do that. All right. Thanks, Scott. All right, buddy.
00:47:33.520
Thanks for joining us today, men. You now have some tools and resources at your disposal
00:47:38.420
to help you work around the grill. But like Scott mentioned several times throughout the
00:47:42.360
interview and the podcast, you have got to get to work, experiment, try some new things,
00:47:46.420
fail, and you'll be well on your way to becoming a grill master yourself. So I hope that you
00:47:51.240
enjoyed the show. As always, I ask you leave a rating and review for the podcast. Uh, again,
00:47:56.200
we are close to the a hundred mark. We're trying to break a hundred. Uh, we've got,
00:48:00.640
I believe 90 or so five-star rating and reviews. I'd love for one of those to be yours. So if you
00:48:08.800
would please head over to order of man.com slash iTunes and leave us a rating and review. Also go
00:48:16.360
check out the show notes for this show and all of our other shows at order of man.com slash zero one
00:48:21.220
five. Now next week, I have a conversation with retired Navy seal commander that you will not,
00:48:26.740
not want to miss. We talk about resilience, mental toughness, and what separates successful men from
00:48:32.960
the rest. So make sure you subscribe to the show. If you haven't done so already at order of man.com
00:48:37.460
slash iTunes. So you do not miss that episode or any other episode we put out there guys. I look
00:48:43.400
forward to talking with you next week, but until then take action and become the man you were meant to
00:48:48.360
be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
00:48:54.040
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