Tag Archives: Barbecue

Paleo Ham Steak

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The Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I decided to do some grilling, Sunday and Monday being taken up with other commitments. I have never entirely understood grilling in painfully hot weather. Sure, being outside is nice, eating grilled food outside even nicer. But charring meat while you are yourself being slowly charred by the sun has never appealed to me. That being said, grilling the ham steak Labor Day weekend gave me a sense of the masochistic pleasure to be taken in grilling on a hot day. You are the brave soul out in the noonday sun, haughtily defying the weather by standing next to an open flame.  It’s a nice feeling to remember as soon as you’re back inside where it’s cool.

The secret to a good glazed paleo ham steak is a small batch of peach compote. Combined with maple syrup, freshly squeezed orange juice and spices it makes the ham steak sweet and spicy and perfect for a really hot day. I served it with a light citrus potato salad slices of very fresh beefsteak tomato drizzled in vinaigrette.

Paleo Ham Steak

Adapted from The Food Network

One two-pound ham steak

¼ cup maple syrup

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon chile powder

1 cup peach compote (recipe below)

1.)   Start your barbecue. Pile up a pyramid of coals to one side of your barbecue and light them. Wait a half hour for the coals to settle down and get very hot.

2.)   Stir together preserves, chile powder, syrup, and orange juice.

3.)   Grill ham steak first to one side of your pyramid of coals, coating each time you turn it with the peach maple glaze. This may take about ten minutes per side, depending on your barbecue and your ham steak. Use a meat thermometer. It’s cooked when the thermometer says it’s at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. When the steak is cooked, put it directly over the coals on either side for a couple of minutes to make it nice and crispy. It will be very gooey and make a complete mess of your barbecue. I assure you it’s delicious and worth the clean up.

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Peach Compote

4 peaches

½ teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons honey

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Juice of one lemon

Combine all ingredients until fruit is soft and starts to break down, about twenty minutes on low heat.

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Rainy Day Barbecued Chicken

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Barbecued chicken always reminds me of my childhood. Gulping down sweet chemical mouthfuls of Country Time lemonade while my father peered over a plate of half cooked barbecued chicken, poking it to check its state of doneness. So maybe the food was secondary back then: the barbecue sauce came from a plastic bottle and the salad was iceberg lettuce and mealy tomatoes. But we’d all gather on the porch of our country place, sitting around a citronella candle, and we’d eat and drink and talk until the fireflies came out and us kids would run out into the fields to play manhunt. Later on, coming home before bedtime, the parents would all still be gathered on the porch drinking Genesee beer, smoking Marlboros, and telling dirty jokes. I’d put on my pajamas and come back out in bare feet to read a Stephen King or  Lloyd Alexander novel with my feet up on the porch rail. Relishing my closeness to and apartness from the adults who’d remained. Bedtime would follow, preceded by the maternal application of Aloe Vera on mosquito bites. I’d fall asleep with dirty feet and leaves in my hair—itchy, but extremely content.

Those summers are long past, but barbecued chicken continues to produce a strong sense memory in me. Whenever I taste those sugars caramelized on crispy chicken skin, I’m back up in the Catskills with the fireflies. Lately, with the weather getting hotter and hotter, I’ve been craving that chicken. But alas, it’s been rainy the last few weeks and opportunities for barbecued dinners have been few and far between. So I finally got fed up and made some oven “barbecue” chicken. Despite the lack of an open fire, it turned out to be the best barbecued chicken I’d ever had. Probably in part due to the homemade ketchup I used in the sauce. I served it with duck fat fried potatoes and a fresh green salad.

Oven Barbecued Chicken

8 chicken pieces

½ cup ketchup

1-tablespoon harissa

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/3-cup cider vinegar

3 tablespoons mustard

¼ cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1.)   Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2.)   Simmer ketchup, harissa, garlic, vinegar, mustard, and brown sugar together until reduced by about half.

3.)   Dry chicken. Season and toss with oil. Coat with half barbecue sauce and place in oven for twenty minutes.

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4.)   Turn over and coat with the other half of the barbecue sauce and cook for another twenty minutes until done.

5.)   Place in broiler five to ten minutes per side for crispy, caramelized skin.

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Victorian Barbecue Sauce with Rhubarb

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I just got my very own copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Flipping through the index, I was attracted to the entry for Victorian Barbecue Sauce with rhubarb. It made me think of English gardens in springtime. I thought of those giant manor houses, and all those skivvies sitting hour after hour beside hot fires turning the meat for the master’s table. What with its evocation of garden fresh ingredients, a kitchen bigger than my apartment, and a dearth of labor laws, this ‘barbecue sauce’ produced such a wealth of associations, I had to make it immediately.

According to the Ball book, “Victorian cooks roasted their meat in huge kitchen fireplaces and enhanced it with homemade sauces concocted from the garden…” So I suppose you could try to make this sauce from almost any fruit you like. It’s got to be good with beef, lamb, chicken, or any number of game fowl. Be sure to eat your rhubarb-basted supper accompanied by a decent hock, with a gooey treacle tart for pudding.

Victorian Barbecue Sauce with Rhubarb

(Adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

2 cups chopped rhubarb

2/3-cup brown sugar

½ cup raisins

2 tablespoons chopped onion

2 tablespoons white vinegar

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

1.)   Put all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

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2.)   Reduce heat to a summer and stirring frequently cook sauce until thickened to consistency of barbecue sauce.

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3.)   Use as is or puree in a food processor to achieve a homogenous texture.

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