This One Goes To 900 Degrees
Like Spinal Tap axeman Nigel Tufnel and his guitars, Nashville barbecuer Catherine Mayhew loves each of her six grills for a different reason. The Weber BabyQ is good for tabletop grilling. She loves Smoky Mountain smokers so much that she owns two. The Char-Broil Professional was bought for testing the recipes in her barbecue book, Handy Mom’s Guide: Grilling (Cool Springs Press).
Mayhew, who put in time in the newsrooms of several local news organizations, fired up the grill every day for months to prepare and test everything from Pepper Jelly Cream Cheese Crostini to Asian Chicken Salad, her favorite recipe in the book. “It tastes just like the salad at Nick of Thyme,” she says of the late, lamented Brentwood cafe/deli/takeout.
A Kansas City Barbecue Society certified master judge, Mayhew knows her way around a slab of pork. (Or beef or salmon.) She also belongs to a competition team, Chicks in Charge.
You’d expect her grill collection to include one that goes to 11, and that would describe The Big Green Egg. She says it "goes from 250 for smoking to 900 degrees or higher...the ceramic holds in moisture. Everything done in it is delicious.”
The book is available at Borders and Davis-Kidd, and also on amazon.com. Check Bites again Thursday for Mayhew’s technique for testing grilled meat for doneness.
