Greetings everyone.

I trust these missives find you alive and well.

Last weekend was the 4th of July weekend and I celebrated as any red blooded atheist American would; by cooking smoldering bits of animal flesh over an open fire.

It’s what I was born to do.

The 4th is always an interesting holiday. Way back in the day the 4th was my wedding anniversary with the former Mrs. right. Alas, it’s been a whole fucking shitload of years since I’ve needed to recognize that insanity.

More recently though there is a new reason to celebrate. The 4th is littlest right’s birthday. That’s my youngest granddaughter. Since I’m doing what everybody else in this fucked up Divided States of America should be doing, I couldn’t celebrate with her in person. Which fucking sucked. We did a group ZOOM gathering and I wished her happy birthday that way.

I wish it was otherwise.

Since we had a 3 day weekend for the 4th, I did my patriotic duty and grilled every goddamn day. As one should!

Since I’ve got a great biggol heap of recipes to give AND since I’ve been busier than fuck-all at work this past week, we’re gonna jump right in head first. Hope you won’t seriously miss my dazzling wit and witty repartee too much.

We’ve got grilling to do dammit!

Let’s start with day one! Friday July 3rd and the menu for that day.

Cumin rubbed pork chops and pineapple/jalapeno salsa!

Yes, we’ve made this before, several times I believe but I don’t give a shit, it’s one of my favorite grilled items ever.

For the pork chops, score yourself some bone-in sirloin chops. I like mine in the medium thickness range.

Yes, we will be brining them overnight prior to grilling. Two things I always brine before grilling are pork chops and boneless/skinless chicken breast. That’s if we haven’t made another fancier marinade instead.

Let’s build the brine.

Simple! Add a couple of bay leaves, a handful of peppercorns and some crushed garlic to a bowl. Then bring one cup of water to a boil and dump in 3 tablespoons of kosher salt to dissolve. Add some ice cubes and cold water to cool the brine down – that would be about 2 additional cups worth of liquid.

Next we place the chops in a 1 gallon ziptop bag and add in the cooled brine. Place in the refrigerator overnight.

Next day, remove the chops from the fridge and get up to room temp.

Now we’re going to get a rub on our brined chops.

Combine two tablespoons of cumin with about 1 teaspoon of chile powder, some salt and pepper and add in some olive oil to make a loose paste.

What is that? Maybe two or three tablespoons of olive oil?

Sure.

Get that rub all over the chops. Both sides. Careful with the rub, that’ll stain your favorite grilling shirt if you’re not careful

Lets get started on our salsa.

Pineapple/fire roasted jalapeno salsa!

A fresh pineapple butchered and cored. We will use about half of a pineapple.

2 jalapenos – fire roasted

About 1/4 cup of a small red onion – minced

Juice of 1/2 of a fresh lime. Save the other half for an upcoming recipe.

A couple of sprigs of fresh cilantro – optional

Let’s fire roast them jalapenos.

Get them charred all over like this.

That’s the ticket. Place some plastic wrap over that bowl and let the jalapenos steam for a minute or two to help loosen the blistered skin.

Now? Mince the red onion

Then we’ve got our peeled jalapenos that we will de-seed and mince thusly.

Get the peppers and onion in a bowl and get to work on that pineapple.

Smaller chunks for the pineapple.

Add the pineapple into the bowl and squeeze in the lime juice. Add the minced cilantro here if you’re using it. Toss well to combine.

Fucking beautiful.

This can be made a day in advance.

Now let’s get some fresh corn ready for the grill. I add some butter, a little essence and some grates of fresh parmesan over the corn then wrap it up in foil.

Get this party on the grill.

Flip the chops over and turn the corn.

That’s lookin’ pretty goddamn tasty.

It’s about 4-5 minutes per side for the chops and twenty total minutes for the corn. Rotate the corn a couple of times during the grilling.

Serve it up.

Add some of that salsa on top of the pork chop.

Good night Irene!

No I didn’t make the beans and yes that is a disposable plate.

The freshness of the salsa and the little kick from the jalapeno perfectly offset the smokiness from the chops. The salsa pairs with the cumin incredibly. Add in the fresh grilled corn? At the end of this meal I said “It’s gonna be pretty fucking hard to beat this meal over the next 2 days.” It was insanely delicious.

Next day was Saturday July 4th!

How about grilling some traditional burgers for the 4th? Sounds fucking delicious.

Yes, you know what comes next.

If you want the complete details go here. That’s my building a better burger post and it gets into the minutiae.

We are doing this motherfucker from scratch.

All of it.

For this I ground up a 2 1/2 pound chuck roast and since that’s a bit too lean for a burger I also ground up 5 slices of bacon that I chopped into smaller pieces.

It looked like this.

I worked the living fuck out of my Kitchenaid on the 4th. First I ground the meat with the grinder attachment.

Now shape the meat into patties.

Last time I didn’t add anything, just let the meat do the talking but this time I added an egg, some salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder along with a handful of crushed tortilla chips and then shaped into the burger patties.

Are you making those homemade buns again?

The fuck you think?

Yes, the Kitchenaid was used for the dough. I love that goddamn thing.

Please take note of the shape of the buns. There are incremental improvements each time I make bread and this time was no exception. Fucking hell they were gorgeous. And stupid delicious.

You have any idea the smells we had going? Grilling burgers and homemade bread baking?

I think my neighbors may hate me.

Slice that bun in half for service and to admire.

Get a burger on there.

And dress as desired. My first burger was just a bit of mayo and a tiny bit of barbecue sauce. My baseline burger.

Now I’m going to show you something truly fucking special. I mean it broke my goddamn mind special.

That’s some of our leftover pineapple/ fire roasted jalapeno salsa leftover from yesterday. I put the salsa on my second burger – so I ate 2 burgers don’t judge me!

Mother of God that may have been the best burger I’ve EVER had. The smokiness from the charcoal and the bacon and the fresh salsa with the afore-mentioned jalapeno kick?

Fuck right off!

After dinner I went online and started searching for Best Burger competitions – dead serious. This bad boy is absolutely competition ready and given the chance – maybe when we have a vaccine – I intend to prove it. I lost my damn mind with that burger.

What can we do for a Sunday Finale?

Here’s a new one.

Grilled salmon with a soy/brown sugar glaze.

A piece or two of fresh salmon for each person

1/3 cup of soy sauce

1/3 cup of brown sugar

2 cloves of minced garlic.

The remaining fresh lime half – sliced into thin slices.

1/4 cup of olive oil.

Get yourself some nice salmon steaks and place in a yet another gallon freezer bag.

Make the marinade. Combine the brown sugar, soy, lime, garlic and oil and mix it well.

Add the marinade to the bag and bag and tag for a couple “too tree” hours.

Get those salmon steaks on the grill.

Your choice here. I tried cooking the salmon directly on the grill as well as cooking in foil. Fish can definitely stick to your grill surface especially with some brown sugar added to the mix. I had great results with both techniques.

That’s some flaky-ass shit right there! That was the salmon steak cooked directly on the grill and damn was that skin extra crispy.

Look at it!

As a side I’m going to make one of my old familiars:

Turmeric rice.

Yes, we have.

1 cup of rice

2 cups of liquid – no chicken stock today so I used water

1/3 cup of minced onion

2 cloves of garlic – minced

1/2 tablespoon of turmeric

Salt and pepper to taste.

Start your rice by sauteing the onion. Give it about 5 minutes or so then quickly add in the garlic. Now in goes the rice.

Saute for about 4-5 minutes until the rice gets toasty then add the turmeric and give a stir.

Yep, that’s some yellow ass shit right there.

Add in the water, bring to a boil, cover tightly with a lid, reduce the heat to LOW and simmer undisturbed for about 17 minutes.

That’s real nice. Season with salt and pepper as desired.

Now we’re going to plate it up.

Side salad and some garlic bread.

(NO I didn’t make the bread today. I may be crazy but I’m not fucking crazy enough to do bread on back-to-back days.)

Serve with a nice white wine – pinot grigio today.

Drop the fucking mike.

The soy and sugar balance each other out creating almost a barbecue sauce thing. A little citrus tang and the garlicky goodness. The marinade is subtle and more of an enhancement. This is some of the best grilled salmon ever. Simple and rich and meaty and goddammit I want to make some more of it right the fuck now!

I slept like a rock when these 3 days were over. It was an absolutely phenomenal weekend of food. Each meal equaled each other yet each one stood on it’s own. Three very different menus with equal amounts of success.

I need a nap just after writing about this.

Try one or try them all cuz I’m sure you’ll find something that tantalizes.

Thanks for reading good folks. I appreciate you being there.

Let’s stay on point, get out of this pandemic – eventually? -and try to find some sort of normalcy in this, the year of our fucking lord 2020.

Love you all!

PEACE and EQUALITY!