Second Round Barbecue

Yeah!!! It gets better everytime I try it.

Well, this time around I perfected the technique. Unlike the last time, I bought a packet of hickory wood chips, only for RM10.90 at ACE Hardware. I was chosing between hickory or mesquite wood chips. But, I made the right choice for the type of barbecue I was preparing. Apparently overdosing your meats with mesquite smoke may result in some bitterness, therefore it's best to use this type of smoking base for larger barbecues and shorter periods of cooking.

So, hickory suite me just fine. I had to get the stuff smoking at first when I used it. A pretty simple task with a "smoking tray". For lack of a proper one, a RM1 pasar malam metal tray suited me just fine. When the smoke started, it was quite strong at first but it mellowed to a nice flow after a while.

Winnie marinated a batch of honey chicken wings. Told her a few additional tips to get the flavour into the wings, ie. a bit of salt, more sugar, don't overdose on the wings etc. I had marinated my version with 1) Cajun Spice, 2) Garam Masala, 3) Good dose of salt, 4) Pepper, and half a lemon (I saw half a lemon lying in the fridge but the next day as I was munching into the chicken, Winnie told me she was using the half lemon to absord the smell of the fridge... mppph.... Could have been the reason for the 'extra' flavours).

Anyway, I loved the mix! Could have held back slightly with the salt but otherwise a recipe that can beat Kenny Rogers or Nando's anyday... hehehe...

Next round of barbi, I'm gonna marinate with a can of coke (for the honey chicken), and do a version of spicy chicken wings... mmpphh.. thinking about it, I gotta try the smoking on some real red meats!

Barbecue at the House!

So, we bought a new barbecue set and this is the first time in a long, long time we did barbecue at our own house. Winnie bought a red little thing, but don't let the size fool ya. It's actually one of the best barbecue set I've had to work with. I've used a RM4,000 barbecue set before, mind you those are feature-full but there's a bigger mess to cleanup and its a bit fussier to set up. Well, RM89 was money well spent!

I learnt a couple of new tricks this time around.

The first is to use charcoal bricket! Yeah, it's the perfect barbecuing agent. Smokeless and you don't get bits flying off it as it burns. This is unlike our traditional method of using char"wood". The ones you get for a couple of ringgit at the local shop. It's also very easy to light up and it burns evenly. The individual pieces is easy to move around, to spread the heat around.

Secondly, instead of spreading the meats individually over the barbecue grille, use a grille clamp that hold a number of meats together. Oh, this really made my job a lot easier! With chicken wings, instead of having the tips getting caught between the grille each time I needed to turn them around, they are tucked neatly between the clamps. Turning the meats around was easy!

What I realised we didn't have was the "smell"! Hehehe, I realise with the traditional method of the wood, you still get a bit of the charred wood smell of the barbecue. With the brickets, this was totally not the case. Next, time around, I'd do it with either hickory of mesquite wood chips....