Sunday, July 22, 2007

Barbecued Perogies...Who Knew?

I haven't touched my barbecue lately on account of a ridiculous schedule and all too frequent downpours. But these last two days, sitting at home and reading the latest escapade of our friend Harry Potter, I finally had time to cook...even though it was nothing very fancy.

Two days ago my girlfriend revealed that she had a craving for perogies. When it comes of those little morsels of carbs and starch I'm really not one to refuse. So, taking the frozen grocery store variety out of our freezer, I boiled the perogies and prepared a frying pan in which I placed bacon, chopped onion and garlic. But this time, instead of transferring the perogies to a skillet full of peanut oil, I brought the little dough balls to the barbecue. The result was nicely charred, crispy and puffy perogies accompanied by the bacon mixture, sour cream, salsa and hot sauce. And anyone who says "Ew!" to salsa on perogies hasn't tried it yet. They're a match made in heaven

In my book (dans mon livre à moé) everything can be grilled except the obvious exceptions such as eggs and other liquid food items. I cook corn (without the husk) directly on the grill and make sure to get loads of barbecue sauce in between each individual kernel. Today I even cooked some bacon strips on the grill to go with my hamburgers. They sizzled beautifully over the flames they were feading in the bottom of my bbq. I then sandwiched them between the patty and a slice of processed cheese, waited for the cheese to melt and then splattered my face in the tomatoey, pickle, onion, jerk bbq sauce goodness of the hamburger more appropriately called a manwich. Simple but delicious.

Now I just have to figure out a way of making my patties taste less bland, a feat I haven't yet achieved dispite the fact that I load it with flavoured bread crumbs, cajun spice mix, chopped red onion, and an egg. Sigh *

1 comment:

Brravehart said...

I jumped on your blog because of BBQ Perogies which I am hoping to try tomorrow. But I ended up reading to the end of the page and love that you will BBQ EVERYTHING possible.
The reason I decided to leave a comment is due to your statement about hamburgers. I wanted to say I hear you loud and clear. Burgers almost never tasted like they did when I was a kid. I used to think it's because I am not little anymore or that I smoke but I have come to STRONGLY believe that like our chicken and all our meats, as well as a lot of veggies, things have lost their flavour due to all the things we do to them in grocery stores to make it bigger (ie, they inject water into chicken breasts so they are bigger, especially when they come on sale)

OK, a solution... if you have the money and or the room to get an entire or half cow. But even if you don't, try and find a local farmer who has free range cattle and allows them to grow the old fashion way.
I personally have not been able to do this as I live in an apartment and even to get smaller amounts I haven't researched where to go and probably couldn't afford it. I used to think people who insist on this kind of meat were snobby. BUT I have since eaten this kind of beef and poultry and I swear it tastes different. The meat itself has flavour. And flavour is what is missing today in our food. The natural flavour that our seasonings used to bring out. Not the seasoning itself being the only flavour.
Anyway, I share your pain in the kitchen but if you get a chance to get some of this meat GO FOR IT.
My other suggestion would be to try buffalo or bison. It is usually raised like I mentioned above and it has AMAZING flavour. I promise you. Not gamey, just FLAVOUR, FLAVOUR, FLAVOUR!
GOOD LUCK, KALIE