Desserts
Hot Stuff
You Can Smoke What?! Steven Raichlen’s Secret to Grilling Ice Cream
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Accompanying these sentiments are a chorus of gasps when I perform one of my favorite party tricks at Barbecue University. I fire up a kettle grill and grab a pint of Haagan Dazs and proceed to smoke the one food you probably never dreamed you could grill: ice cream. I wish I could say I invented grilled ice cream (I did invent this particular technique), but I stand on the shoulders of giants. I got the idea from Spain’s mad scientist of the grill: Victor Arguizoniz. To look...
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Smoked Dessert at a BBQ Competition: First Place Recipe
I am thrilled to be part of a BBQ team from The Minuteman Smokehouse & Grill (Morristown, NJ). On September 17th, we participated in the Champion of Grill competition in Sussex County, NJ competing in multiple meat categories, and for the first time . . . dessert. I’m a lifelong home baker, but had never really thought about smoking or grilling dessert beyond throwing some halved pit-fruit on the Weber with some sugar or honey. So I turned to Barbecuebible.com...
Read more →Yes, Smoked Ice Cream
Photo by Richard Dallett. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Something so sacred? You know I smoke and/or grill just about everything. But ice cream? Yes, folks, I’ve even smoked ice cream. It’s not as strange as it sounds. I broke ground in my first television show, Barbecue University, with my recipe for Baked Hawaii—ice cream-filled, meringue-coated pineapple. (Find the recipe in Beer-Can Chicken.) Grilling iconoclast Victor Arguinzoniz of the restaurant Etxebarri...
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Applying Lessons Learned at BBQ U: Pumpkin Pie Hits the Grill
If barbecue is a religion, most of the time I find myself preaching to the choir. But last year at Barbecue University I had the opportunity to make a convert. Her name was Toni Dash and she came to BBQ U with terrific writing skills (from her blog, BoulderLocavore.com) but little experience grilling. Well, to judge from this innovative dessert—grilled pumpkin pie with a smoked gingersnap crust—she caught the holy fire. She’s also a mind reader, because...
Read more →National S’mores Day Is Coming Up: Here Are 10 New Ways to Celebrate
You heard it here first: Monday, August 10, is National S’mores Day. The origins of this campfire treat are unclear. We do know that the recipe for s’mores first appeared in a 1927 scouting handbook called Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. Yes, this portmanteau word—a combination of “some” and “more”—has been on the lips of North American outdoor cooks for nearly a century. (As have dabs of gooey fire-roasted marshmallows, smears of chocolate, and graham...
Read more →Chocolate Meets Grill
If the way to someone’s proverbial heart is through the stomach, an even faster route is with chocolate. As a spouse, partner, or parent, you probably know this already. If not, learn it fast. When I was growing up, chocolate was, well chocolate. Today, you have to choose between dark chocolate and milk, bar chocolate and cocoa, single estate chocolate and 90 percent. And what the heck are cocoa nibs? All chocolate derives from the seedpod of a tropical fruit appropriately named Theobroma...
Read more →SMORES
WINTER GRILLING, CONTINUED S'mores on a frozen lake at Camp Towanda in Pennsylvania with our friends Mitch and Stephanie Reiter. What's the craziest thing YOU'VE ever put on a s'more? Here are ideas for variations on the theme: 1) Uptown S'Mores--s'mores using chocolate chip cookies instead of graham crackers--see Barbecue Bible, page 512. 2) Nutella S'Mores--spread cinnamon graham crackers with Nutella or another hazelnut chocolate spread...
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