A Mix On The Grill

It's grilling time and that means dumping a load of different meats and cuts over charcoal or wood chips. This is the time to enjoy a variety of flavors and textures, fire roasted to perfection. A mixed grill is easy to create and wonderful to serve , especially for weekend cookouts.

Sam Sifton explored this and wrote about it in today's New York Times Food section. A good mixed grill is an international favorite. The Brazilians have churrasco, a marriage of chicken and beef along wit hearts and gizzards. Their neighbors , the Argentines tie livers and kidneys together roast them over flames, douse the whole mix with chimichurri sauce  and call it asado., The Italians do something similar with olive oil rubbed chicken ,then serve it with grilled beef and pork. The ultimate meat lovers , the English add some veggies to theirs, namely tomatoes and mushrooms to lamb and dry brined pork called gammon. We Yanks have our own version, namely the all American cookout. Ours is a mix of different cuts and meats, sometimes turned into  potluck thanks to guests bringing everything from salads to cornbread. Most times we  just haphazardly drop any meat on the grill and hope for the best. At best it works out to a yummy array of outdoor favorites, at worst it looks  like a Paleo nightmare.

Is there a method to this grilling madness?Yes, according to both celebrity chef Bobby Flay and  Chef Adam Lang who went from haute cuisine to grilling in his new restaurant , Daisy May's BBQ. start with any kind of sausage.They are a great intro as to what will come and also foolproof. Nothing can go wrong with  them. The next meat is chicken, It usually takes the longest of all the meats to thoroughly cook up. Cook it on one side and at the same time cook up burgers and steaks or even grill corn.The next issue is the barbecue sauce. It really is a condiment instead of a marinade. Unfortunately, many home grillers don't realize this and slather the sugar laden sauce on everything. This is wrong. Commercial  sauce has a lot of sugar in it which turns into carbon when it reacts to high heat.Add a good amount of water to any barbecue sauce before slathering it on to reduce charring and burning. Mr. Sifton includes   a recipe for a barbecue sauce that only has a 1/4 cup of brown sugar which is not that sweet, considering there is also apple cider vinegar and ketchup.a mixed grill should have veggies too, to cut all that protein. Try the standard corn, first blanched in milk infused water and then grilled along with a grilled Caesar salad. This last gives a bitterness that only sweetens the taste of the meat.

Fire up the grill and then thrown on your favorite cuts.Enjoy the variety of smoky , fire roasted flavors from beef, pork and poultry. This is want summer eating is all about.