Use The Right Heat For The Job. There are two types of heat for food on a grill – direct and indirect. With direct heat, you spread your coals out evenly (or cook directly over the burner on a gas grill), and cook directly over the hot coals. This works very well for burgers, hot dogs, and items that don’t cook for all that long. With indirect heat, you pile your coals to one or both sides of the grill, and leave the middle empty (or switch the side burners on, and leave the middle off) or with a pan for drippings. You’d then put your food in the middle, so the heat is more even. This works for foods like chicken, that typically cook for longer.
Fat Is Good. While most health-care professionals will advise you to limit your fat intake, when you’re barbecuing, you need to choose meats that have good marbling. Fat will keep the meat moist over the high heat, which will prevent it from drying out (chicken and/or turkey should always be grilled with the skin on – you can always take it off before eating it). When grilling any kind of meat with a fat cap, always start the grilling fat side up. Turn it over about three-fourths of the way through.
Avoid Excessive Flipping. Give your food time to cook, and don’t be worried about it. This is especially true for burgers and steaks, which should only be flipped once. Any more than that, and you lose the juices in the meat. If you’re using the right heat method, you won’t need to flip very often.
Try New Things. Try grilling some fish, or vegetables. Yes, even the vegetables you don’t like take on a whole different flavour when they’re grilled, so why not try some veggie kebabs? For a really nice touch, grill some fresh fruit (not for very long, mind you, but just enough to accent the natural sweetness of the fruit). That works for everything except watermelon (and to eat watermelon any way other than the normal way is just downright un-American if you ask me).
This post is by Guest Blogger Yaneev. Thanks, mister!
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08Jun
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23May
On June 19th at the Kennedy Center, ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership present
An Evening with Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray: Food, Culture and Fulfillment: Living a Richer Life
“Celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray are nationally known for their multiple television shows on the Food Network….Join us for a special evening with two great chefs as they explore the role of the creative process in their work and delve into how food and wine have brought people together for centuries, connecting diverse cultures and enhancing the richness of life.” Tickets start at $50 and go on sale May 28. Call 202-326-9530 or email speaker@asaecenter.org.
They were kind enough to send us free tickets to attend this event, so I’ll be sure to let you all know how faaaaaabulous it was if you can’t make it! -
09May
Unless you travel a lot, or you’re somehow drawn to airport magazines, we’d imagine you missed this month’s Washington Flyer Magazine. Heck, we would have if we hadn’t been stuck in the middle of a Washigton Flyer Taxi strike at Dulles.
But, our region’s favorite airport magazine (actually, I’ve never seen another airport system with a magazine, so it’s probably the only airport magazine…) did a series of food articles which are worth checking out. Among them:
Look Who’s Coming to Dinner – If you were a famous DC chef and could cook for anyone, who would it be? Chef’s answerws include Dave Chappelle, George Lopez (right), Duke Ellington, Thomas Jefferson and, umm, Laura Bush.
Mexican to Go – A search for authentic Mexican fare in Mexico City turns out to be harder than the writer thought.
Foodie Fight – Our personal favorite, in that it features the excellent Jason of DCFoodies.com up against two more traditional food writers, reviewing their favorite restaurants .. and then reviewing the other reviewers. It’s a quirky concept, but worth a read. Congrats to Jason on his every growing fame!
And, most importantly, you don’t even have to make the horrible trip to Dulles to read the articles. -
24Apr
The good news is, ZAF is extremely employed. There is money where before there was only broken dreams and kittens. Who also had broken dreams.
But the bad news is a dry spell for the FUD at the moment. So, to counteract this terrible state of affairs, we are looking for…..
A FEW NEW WRITERS!!
Were you annoyed by a restaurant?
Do you have some random recipes to share?
Have you discovered the best wine in DC?
Do you need some hipster cred?
Then we want you for DCFUD. Send any sort of writing sample to dcfud.writers@gmail.com, along with a couple ideas you’d like to write about. It’ll be crazy! -
28Mar
We’ve brought you DC-based bitching, Transit nerd ranting, food love, and Windy city rumors. Now, in our biggest challenge yet, Smorgasblog brings our most far-flung blog yet…from IRAQ!
The Smorgasblog media empire and our dozen or so unpaid writers would like to welcome a new member to the family:
PNG’d brings you the straight scoop from a highly anonymous and very funny worker in the Green Zone. Check him out. -
09Mar
It came to my attention yesterday that we’ve been neglecting our list of great places to get coffee with wi-fi. Updates are forthcoming, but before we do so, we’d like to know what other places you know of with wireless (free or pay) in the DC area. Please add any suggestions either in the comments in this post or email us at dcfud.writers@gmail.com. -
07Mar
Splenda has long been a mainstay on this blog for its humorous lawsuits and creepy medical effects. But what about Spenda, the Puppy Killer?
A number of sources have published undercover findings on the infamous ‘Huntingdon Life Sciences’ product testing company. If your’re an enviro-type, you might recognize the name from older allegations that staff there were incompetent, unnecessarily cruel, and drunk. Anyway, current rumors are that early testing of Splenda killed 12,800 animals including a whole lot of adorable puppies and monkeys, who apparently weren’t so adorable by the time they’d been force-fed Splenda and then… well, you know.
If you really want some of the gory details, here are a couple hippie sites trafficking in moral outrage. I warn, this really isn’t for anyone who’s just eaten. Or is about to eat. Or ever wants to eat again:
World Vegan News
An anti-Huntingdon page
Inside HLS. They don’t dig it, apparently
So all you people claiming that Splenda should not be used by the public until its effects were fully known, this is all your fault. -
28Feb
You’re used to sticking them in your mouth, now put them around your neck. Yep, I’m talking about cutlery jewelry. You’ve seen them at all the cheesy middle-school-art-teacher boutiques…and on late 90’s alternative singers. And hippies. But now humans can have them too. This means the next time you’re stuck with a huge plate of fois gras, truffles, and caviar without a spoon, you know where to reach.Or, if braceletes are more your thing,
http://spoonman.com/nbr413e.htm
Or how about…
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20Feb
Zagat’s is running their annual write-in survey for DC/Baltimore again. If you are not familiar with their little red restaurant guidebooks – and which planet have you been living on? – this dining series is compiled from readers filling out an online survey rating the restaurants they eat at. Then the editors put together catchy little reviews. Last year’s had over 6,000 participants, including yours truly, covering 923 local restaurants. Love it or hate it you can’t simply ignore Zagat’s influence, as proved by the Zagat rating posed proudly in the windows of high rated places around town
The survey is easy and quick to do, with space to write-in restaurants that aren’t already listed. The payoff is a free copy of the guide sent to you when it comes out. Yup, free. Go to
http://www.zagat.com/
Look on the middle left for Vote, Active Surveys, and click on Washington DC,/Baltimore. You will have to sign in, give them a little info so they know where to send the guide when it comes out, vote, and that’s it. The closing date is March 12, 2006.
You can also tell Zagats other cities you’re familiar with and get notified when their surveys are happening. I participate the NY and South Florida surveys since I am there often enough to be familiar with their restaurant scene — and I get the free guides for those too.
Thanks guest blogger, MHF! -
24Jan
Two articles of note:
First, I Heard It on NPR –
The employees of Saveur magazine have listed their 100 favorite restaurants, food, drink, and, well, things. (The above URL has the link for the list, as well as the story from NPR, which is well worth a listen.) (As an added bonus, they include the recipe for perde pilavi, a Turkish wedding dish. If anyone tries it, let us know how it turns out.)
Second, Steak a la CBS –
The Early Show has an interesting story on choosing the right steak on a budget.
