Grilled Swordfish With Greek Salad

Swordfish is great for grilling. It is a very firm-fleshed fish, and holds together where other fish flake apart. If you are just starting out with grilling fish, try swordfish.

Swordfish may be easy to grill, but it is very mild-tasting. I marinate swordfish in olive oil with lemon, oregano, and a pinch of sugar. This gives it a crunchy browned crust on the grill. Then I serve it with a Greek salad full of olives, feta cheese, and grilled peppers and onions. The result is a balance of opposites—mild, meaty swordfish meets crunchy, bold salad.

Now, if you've been around for a while (like me), you might be thinking: Swordfish? Isn't it endangered? What happened to "Give swordfish a break?"

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Your memory isn't failing you. Swordfish was in trouble back in the '90s, and there was a campaign to save it. Thanks to good fisheries management, North Atlantic swordfish had fully recovered by 2009. Buy swordfish that was caught in North American waters and give your conscience a break—our swordfish is sustainable, and will be around for a very long time.

Recipe: Grilled Swordfish with Greek Salad

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Things I Love: Essential Grilling Tools

Tongs - my hands on the grill

Memorial Day has passed. Grilling season is now open!

To start you off right, here is my list of essential grilling tools.
*PS: Want a summer of worry-free grilling? Now is the time to clean your grill.


1. Tongs
Tongs are my hands at the grill. 16 inch tongs give me a little extra distance from the fire; 12 inch tongs are better for close-in work with a lot of flipping (like chicken wings).

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Pan Grilled Bratwurst and Sauerkraut

Choucroute Garnie is one of my all time favorite meals. I thought I liked sauerkraut until I had it at Brasserie Flo. That's where I found out sauerkraut could be amazing.

Last fall I fermented and canned my own sauerkraut, trying to duplicate that wonderful choucroute. My batch of homemade sauerkraut was good, but not as good as Brasserie Flo; I need to try again this year.

The homemade sauerkraut experiment left me with a surplus. Now, I love it, but my family…not so much.
*The kids are sure sauerkraut is a trick, one of dad's weird jokes. I mean, sour is right there in the name, and I expect them to eat it? Riiight. Sure thing, dad.

I've been using the kraut up over the course of the last year, and this is my favorite recipe. I combine the basics of choucroute garnie with pan grilled brats, giving me a quick version of my beloved meal.

First, the brats and kraut steam together in a foil-covered pan on the grill, sharing their flavors. Then the foil is removed. The brats are grilled over the open flames while the kraut boils in the uncovered pan, steaming off any excess liquid.

Looking for a weeknight dinner on the grill with great bratwurst and great sauerkraut? Give pan grilling a try.

Recipe: Pan Grilled Bratwurst and Sauerkraut

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Indirect High Heat on Your Grill - Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who responded to my indirect high heat grilling survey. I got fifteen responses, which I thought was a pretty good turnout.

So, what did we learn?

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Slow Cooker Mexican Shredded Pork with Dried Chile Pepper Sauce (Pork Deshebrada)

I'm a food geek. I get enthusiastic about recipes like yakitori chicken skewers, pressure cooker Pho Bo, and rotisserie duck with a pomegranate glaze.

But what recipe do my friends and family love? Slow cooker shredded pork. That recipe has a lot of bang for the buck. Toss everything in the slow cooker, come back ten hours later, and you have shredded pork that would fit right in on a Mexican roadside taqueria.

Little league baseball is back in season, and my nights are getting hectic. I've already made my slow cooker shredded pork a couple of times this season; it is time for something new.

This is a riff on mole, the long simmered Mexican sauce. I'm using the slow cooker's long cooking time to give me the advantages of a mole without all the work. The dried peppers soften in the slow cooker, along with some other aromatics, and I use the defatted pork juices as the liquid in the sauce. A quick whiz in the blender, and I have a complex, sweet, earthy sauce with some mild heat.

Give this a try when you are bored with slow cooker pork. It is a tiny bit more work, but cleaning the blender isn't that hard - especially if you use a stick blender.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Mexican Shredded Pork with Dried Chile Pepper Sauce (Pork Deshebrada)

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