BBQ Fun at the Lava Lounge
 

Just outside my door, is a nice sized barbecue, which I put to use from time to time.
Last night, I decided to try something different for my burgers.
I started by coating the patties with garlic powder and cracked black pepper (I looove black pepper) - pretty usual stuff here.
Then I took the patties, and tossed them in a large ziploc bag with about a half cup of Myer's Special Dark Rum. I let them marinade for about 3 hours - they smelled SO good, I was ready to devour them raw!

I put a dab of butter on each half of the buns, and toasted them on the grill for a few minutes.

I topped off each burger with some bleu cheese crumbles, and a splot of Bullseye BBQ sauce.

Even Rose (my dear wife) absolutely loved them.

Anybody else have some good recipes/tips for bbq'ing?

We've been TiVo'ing "Good Eats" with Alton Brown. He has had a couple of episodes with great BBQ ideas. He has a great tip on marinading: dump the meat and the marinade in a large zip-lock baggie and push all the air out before sealing. We are saving a lot of the episodes to DVD.

My favorite is marinated tri-tip and corn on the cob (slather the corn in butter and a spice or two (varies) and wrap in tin foil to throw in with the steaks). Num num!

If a vegetarian is coming over, thoroughly clean your grill, and grill the veggie burgers in their own section of the grill, as far as possible from splattering/juicy meats. And don't give them a bun--or anything from the burger side of the grill.

Actually, for vegetarians, I have another grill :)

Will you be my friend?

Put the blue cheese INSIDE the burger when you make the patties!

Oh great, now I'm hungry.

Corn on the cob is awesome on the BBQ, with a little squeeze of lime and some chili powder, parm. cheese if you like.... Or you can mix up some flavored butter to use.

Now I have to go eat lunch.

If you have a favorite meatloaf recipe, make it into patties and throw it on the grill (minus some portion of the wet ingredients and probably a little more of the dry to help the patties hold together a little better).

Mmmm! Those were so good. But they definitely needed more of a binder - it was more like sloppy joes by the time we ate it.

Lemon juice gets very smokey, but it makes things oh-so-good. Things like, oh... shrimp, or perhaps bacon-wrapped asparagus :)

Emeril's chicken apple sausage (probably other brands of chicken-apple too) are EXCELLENT cooked on the grill

Mustard onion:
Take a yellow onion, cut it down toward the base in many sections, open it up a bit, squeeze some mustard down in all the cuts, then pack that sucker full of brown sugar. Wrap it up in tinfoil and cook until soft (about 1/2 hour or more). Great alone or as sandwich topping for the above-mentioned sausages.