So whilst we’ve been watching a whole afternoon of sport on the goggle box, Neil’s faithful barbecue has been smoking our dinner.

The rib roast has been marinaded overnight with our Beastly Beef marinade then rubbed with sea salt, cracked black pepper and some fresh thyme. We cooked this a little hotter than normal, in the 300F range, for around four hours. Our wood of choice has been English oak, naturally this came from Paul over at Goulden’s BBQ Smoking Woods.

Well that’s enough babbling, here’s some food pron instead…

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Japanese soy sauce – we use kikkoman
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp hot sauce – we use Frank’s
• 2 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 cloves of garlic – crushed by hand
• 1/2 small onion – chopped

Method:

• Mix everything apart from the onion together in a large bowl
• Dilute with a little water if desired
• Pour chopped onion in to the bowl so it forms a bed at the bottom
• Place beef on the bed of onion
• Around half an hour before cooking, remove beef and rub with sea salt and cracked black pepper.
• After half your marinade time, flip the beef.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp salt
• 2 Dsp Demerara  sugar
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp ground celery seeds
• Optional 1/4 teaspoon corn flour

Method

Simply mix everything together and run quickly through a spice grinder (or coffee grinder) to get an even consistency.

Ingredients

Serves four to six as a side

• 1 cup couscous
• 1 1/2 cups good vegetable/chicken stock (homemade is best)
• 1 finely chopped red onion (1/2 if it’s a big one)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced ( I grate on a fine microplane grater, works really well)
• 1 red pepper diced
• 1 red chili, de-seeded and chopped finely
• A handful of Petit Pois, frozen are fine, as are normal peas
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin (freshly toasted and ground is far better but straight out of a jar is good enough)
• 1 tsp of Hot Smoked Paprika (or sweet paprika if you don’t want that extra heat)
• 2 tbsp cooking oil, I use red palm and canola but olive oil would be good
• 1/2 cup good quality crunchy peanut butter
• Optional 1 tbsp dry white wine or dry vermouth
• Optional 1 tsp powdered chipotle chillies ( gives a nice smokey flavour and some heat)
• Optional A knob of butter for cooking and one for stirring through at the end, no more than 1/2 Oz total.

Method

• In a medium sized saucepan, heat the oil over a medium/high heat
• Add red pepper and chili pepper, stir quickly for 30 secs to one minute to soften
• Add red onion (and one knob of butter if using it) and lower heat, sweat the onions for a minute or two
• Add garlic and continue to sweat the onions until they are just translucent, be careful with heat here or your garlic will burn and go bitter.
• If using wine add now and stir through
• Add all spices and stir
• Add stock and bring to boil
• Stir or whisk in the peanut butter until it dissolves
• Add the peas, season to taste and bring to the boil.
• Stir in couscous and return to the boil stirring constantly.
• Remove from heat, cover and leave for ten minutes.
• When you return all of the cooking liquor should have been absorbed, at this point the couscous should be stirred gently and then either drizzle a little more oil through or put a knob of butter in and continue to stir until it melts.
• Transfer to a dish and either serve or leave to cool.

Ingredients

• 1/2 Red Cabbage
• 1 Medium Onion
• 1 Large Carrot
• 4 tbsp Mayonaise
• 2 tbsp Natural Yogurt
• 1 – 2 tbsp Cranberry Sauce (add to taste)
• Pinch of salt

Method

Shred your cabbage (I use my magimix for all of this as it’s just so darned quick)

Peel and grate your onion and carrot.

Place all your veggies in a large bowl.

In a seperate bowl combine your mayo and yogurt then add in some cranberry sauce. Taste it and see if you like it, should be slightly sweet, don’t be afraid more cranberry if so inclined.

Season mayo mixture to taste then stir into your veggies – job done.

For a bit of variation try bashing up some mixed nuts and sprinkling in.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs chicken wings (about 12 wings)
• 3 Tbsp butter, melted
• 4 Tbsp bottled hot pepper sauce (like Crystal or Frank’s Original)
• 1 Tbsp paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Method

• Mix together all ingredients to make the wing sauce.
• Marinade wings in half of the sauce for at least 1 hour, preferably longer
• Grill  or deep fry the wings until fully cooked.
• Warm the remaining sauce, pour over cooked wings and serve immediately.

Serve with our Blue Cheese Dip and you’ll be in wing heaven.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar or white vinegar
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Method

Mix everything together in a blender and blend until smooth. That’s it.

This recipe is for a leg of lamb cooked low and slow but there’s no reason you couldn’t apply the rubs and glaze to chops or lamb kebabs for grilling. In fact these flavours will work well with pork or chicken too.

The Rub

Ingredients

Makes about 1 cup:

• 1/4 cup sea salt flake
• 1/4 cup (packed) light Muscovado sugar
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp coarse black pepper (more or less to taste)
• 2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns
• 1 star anise
• 1 tsp onion granules
• 1/2 tsp garlic granules
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp celery salt
• 1/2 tsp chili powder (1 tsp for hotter rub)
• 1 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds

Method

• Use a pestle and mortar to break up the star anise, part way through add the Szechuan peppercorns and break it all down to the consistency of coarse black pepper.
• Place mixture in a large mixing bowl and set to one side.
• Use the pestle and mortar to crack the sesame seeds then add the salt and grind down to a semi-coarse consistency.
• Add this to your mixing bowl along with the rest of the ingredients and mix well, until everything’s throughly combined.
• Alternatively you can whack all the ingredients in a food processor and grind to a fine powder. It’s a quick and easy method but you don’t get the control over the texture. I like to leave the peppercorns, sesame seeds and salt a little coarse with this one.
• Rub your leg of lamb with between 1/2 and 1 cup of rub depending on the size of your joint. Place any remaining rub in an airtight container and it should keep for months as long is it’s kept cool and away from sunlight.
• I recommend leaving your lamb rubbed up for about 3-5 hours before cooking.

The Glazing Sauce

Ingredients

Makes about 1 1/2 cups, enough for a small jar:

• 1/2 cup hoisin sauce
• 1 cup fresh chicken stock
• 3 tbsp dry sherry
• 2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 star anise
• 1/2 fresh red chilli pepper (deseeded)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 spring onions
• 1-3 tsp brown sugar
• 1-2 tsp Chines 5 spice

Method

• Finely chop the chilli and spring onion. Use all the spring onion, the green bits at the top are full of flavour.
• Saute the spring onion and chili in the butter over a moderate heat until they soften well and the onions start to caramelise.
• Turn the heat up to high and add the sherry. Cook off the alcohol in the sherry.
• Add the chicken stock, peanut butter, star anise, hoisin, 1 tsp 5-spice and 1/2 tsp sugar.
• Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
• Remove the star anise and transfer mixture to a food processor. Blend it until smooth then return to the pan.
• Simmer uncovered for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce starts to thicken.
• At this point taste it. You might want to add more sugar or 5-spice but it will depend on the hoisin you’ve used. I use a Chinese brand from my local Chinese supermarket, it’s really tangy so I need to add another tsp of sugar at this point. But some hoisin sauces are a lot less tangy so you might want a bit more 5-spice to give the sauce more punch. The sauce shouldn’t need any salt but a quick hit of freshly ground pepper will work if you fancy it. Let your taste-buds judge it.
• Transfer the sauce to your storage container, let it cool and store in the fridge for up to a month. If you sterilize a jar for storage then it should keep a lot longer.

Cooking

• Set up your smoker for low ‘n’ slow at 225F – 250F. I use quite a light wood for this and I really only tickle the meat with smoke, whatever you do, don’t oversmoke this dish.
• Your going to cook this to an internal temperature of between 140F and 160F depending on how rare you like it. I normally like my meat so rare that it tries to dodge the fork, but I reckon this is one that goes well around medium (150F). That’s going to take a few hours – about five beers I think.
• When you get to about 10F short of your target temperature, glaze the lamb with some of your sauce (pre-warmed). At this point it’s worth raising the temperature of your smoker to 300F if you can. This will caramelise the glaze even better, but don’t worry if you can’t.
• I like to serve it thinly sliced with a spicy rice noodle salad and some of the sauce served warm. If you like your meat well done, I reckon this will shred very nicely.

Ingredients

Makes enough to marinade a small roasting joint – apx 2-3lbs

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp (heaped) hot horseradish sauce (would use prepared horseradish if you can get it, but a smaller amount)
• Leaves from 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 clove of garlic (minced)
• A little water to dilute.

Plus sea salt and black pepper for final seasoning.

Method

Mix all the ingredients together and pour over your meat. If vacuum marinading, add meat and liquid to vacuum bag and seal. Use a rolled up piece of kitchen towel near the top of the bag but before the sealing point to protect you vac sealer from inhaling the marinade.

Leave to marinade in the fridge for between 2 and 24 hours. If marinading in a bowl, turn the meat over every so often.

When ready to cook, remove from the marinade and pat dry with kitchen paper. Season with sea salt and cracked black pepper and cook your beef as normal.

We love our Mavericks but we’ve always had a couple of gripes with them, but the good news is that there is now an updated version. The Redi Check ET-732 from Maverick Industries promises to resolve all the commonly reported issues with the original.

We’ve just got our hands on our first ET-732 so here’s a quick review of our first impressions.

In the Box

	Upon opening the box it’ll look familiar to existing ET-73 owners. The box contains…
	Transmitter + wire stand Receiver Food Probe Pit Probe + Grill Clip 4 AAA batteries Instructions

The first thing to notice is that the build quality of everything seems to be a lot better. The power switch on the transmitter is no longer inside the battery compartment, the buttons seem better and the new transmitter stand now rotates to be either a hanger or stand. There are external stubby antennas on both units, this should help with the promised extended range. We were a little disappointed to find the supplied probes are just the short (4ft) versions, we were even more disappointed when we tried connecting some of our 6ft ET73 probes only to find they don’t work with the ET732.

Features and Functions

A quick read of the instructions reveals that operation is almost identical to the older version. The addition of an out of range alarm and timer function is pretty good though. Additionally there is an extra button on the transmitter which allows the user to change the transmitter display between Centigrade and Farenheit and doubles as a re-sync button if held for two seconds.

We particularly like the new orange backlight on the receiver, it’s much brighter than the green light on the old version.

How Well Does It Work?

Short answer -very well indeed. We always loved our ET-73′s but this new replacement is in a different league. Our test cook for this device is a brisket for dinner and a fatty for lunch, both cooked on a Pro Q Excel 20. We fired up the E20 first thing and put the pit probe in place. The transmitter and receiver sync’d automatically and immediately started to give us a display on both units.

Once up to temperature we put the brisket on and then did a quick range test. Now the ET-73 will only just reach the inside of Neil’s house, the receiver has to be left on his dining table in order to get a signal. With the 732 we are able to have the receiver anywhere in the house, Neil being particularly happy that he can can get a signal in his bedroom so he can now sleep during over night smokes. The improved range is worth the money alone.

Conclusion

We are a bit disappointed about the probes supplied with the unit as it will cost us extra to get 6ft probes again, when we have four 6ft probes for our ET-73′s, this is a bit of a pain. However this minor irk is more than compensated for by the improved build quality and range. It’s fair to say our existing Redi checks will now probably be resigned to a life gathering dust in the shed, we are genuinely surprised how much better this unit seems to be. Only time will tell if the new units have much better build quality, they seem more solid now but I’ll reserve final judgement until I’ve been using one for a season.

All in all, we’d say that along with a Superfast Thermapen, the Maverick Redi Check ET-732 is an essential piece of kit for any serious BBQ’er.