Grilling at Work

Anyone who's had more than 5 minutes around me this summer knows that I desperately long for a grill of my own. Georgia fire codes prevent me from owning a real fire-spewing grill in my complex. As long as I live in a box with 10 other people, the primal urge to sear and char food over open flame will have to be suppressed, or at least mitigated by smoking meats at low temperature in my little brown egg.

Or so I thought. I had the rare (for me) treat of actually preparing real grilled food this week. Oddly enough, I did it at work. The occasion was a grill out hosted by my company's strategic partners, the fellows at Propane Design. Steve, Propane's owner, kindly let me take the reigns and burn some burgers (and brauts).

It was hotter than heck outside, but I still had a blast. Every man loves to cook out, and having to suppress our most basic hunter urges goes against billions of years of instinct. It's just not natural!

Besides the biological reasons why grill bans are evil, there are the culinary reasons. Nothing you can do inside your home will make your meats, fruits and veggies taste like they do when they come off a grill. It's just a fact. Even my broiler can't get hot enough to match the jet engine-like flame of your basic gas grill and heat equals browning. And we all know that brown tastes good.

I'll be the first to admit it - I suck at grilling. Call it years of inexperience. I still haven't learned the basics of temperature control or food placement on the grill. I'm pleased to say that my grilling got better as the afternoon wore on. I did a surprisingly good job at dessert, but that's a different post.

In addition to over/undercooking the meat, I provided a Pyrex full of my Mom's Jack Daniels baked beans (recipe below). These don't seem to be too popular with the women, but the guys sure do devour them. If you're too much of a nancy boy, you can cut back on the JD to 1/3 of a cup. Oh, and don't make the mistake of using coffee grounds instead of instant coffee. Bad eats!

Jack Daniels Baked Beans
Courtesy of Mama Conway

3 cans (15 oz. ea) Pork and Beans
1/2 cup Jack Daniels Whiskey
3 tbsp. Brown Sugar, packed
1.5 tbsp. Yellow Mustard
1 tsp. Instant Coffee

Drain the liquid out of one can of beans. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350 degrees uncovered for 45 min to 1 hour. Serves 12, 3.5 WW pts. per serving.

Kurt, a designer at Propane, found an interesting new product at our local megamart. Kosciusko beer mustard, in case you don't get it, is spicy brown mustard with beer in it (45% amber lager, per the label). It was love at first sight for me.

It was exactly what I was hoping for - a mild spicy brown flavor with a major (but not overdone) beer overtone. We had it on everything there, from the burgers to the bratwursts to the 'tater salad and beans. Oh the joys of this awesome mustard on sizzling hot bratwursts...

This stuff will definitely find a home in the Conway household soon.

Thanks to Steve Zwonitzer for taking the picture of me at the grill.