With the heat of summer comes a dressing down in many respects. Just as we cast off our jackets for bare arms, we leave behind the heavy foods of colder weather, turning towards more basic preparations. What is more quintessentially summer than grilling? Open-air cooking is a seasonal staple—barely dressed meats tossed over an open flame, the heat dissipating in the summer air instead of hanging hot and languid in the kitchen. Grilling is the perfect occasion to bring people together for a simple, primal purpose—the community meal.
Who better to provide grilling tips than Ronnie Bowers, chef at S&W Steak and Wine (56 Patton Ave., Asheville, 828-505-3362)? “Barbecue is my favorite thing to do,” he says, almost wistfully. Bowers says that he is strongly biased when it comes to the meats he chooses for his barbecue. “Boston butts make great barbeque, but where I’m from it’s the shoulder—the shoulder with the big skin flap on it.” Before cooking, he prepares the meat with a basic rub and lets it sit and work its magic for a while. “Barbecue is as much about the pre-cure and the rub as it is about the actual cooking process,” he says. For smaller cuts like ribs, he recommends rubbing down the meat and letting it sit for three or four hours. For larger cuts like butts and shoulders, he recommends rubbing, wrapping well and then resting it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
Bowers uses a cooking technique called “Texas Crutch” to give his grilled meats the flavor of the pit without the all-consuming, all-night tending. The process calls for grilling over indirect, low heat with simultaneous smoking. For his gas grill, Bowers simply places pre-soaked—but not dripping—wood chips in a tinfoil boat over the heat but under the meat. After a set amount of time, the meat is removed from the grill, wrapped in tinfoil, and finished in the oven at a low setting until done. For a Boston butt or shoulder, says Bowers, “You put about two or three hours of smoke on it, slather it with your sauce, wrap it in tinfoil and then set it in a 225-degree oven. For ribs, you want an hour of smoke, three hours in the oven (also at 225). It’s perfect,” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing. You wake up in the morning and your house smells like barbecue because you‘ve had it going all night in the oven, and you didn‘t have to stay up all night tending a fire. It‘s a good way to do pit-style barbeque at home.”
On the other side of the heat and speed spectrum for grilling are items like steaks and kabobs. When grilling steaks and more tender cuts of meat, says Bowers, it is essential that the grill be smoking hot. The broiler at the S&W, for example, can reach an astoundingly hot 1600 degrees. Obviously, the home cook will have a bit of trouble replicating that, but the faster you can cook meat the better.
For his steaks and kebobs, Bowers is pro-marinade and knows well how to extract the greatest amount of flavor from his ingredients. Since flavors are either water-soluble or fat-soluble, he explains, home cooks would do best to make a marinade that incorporates one part fat with one part acid. “If your marinade contains both a vinegar or wine base as well as some oil, then you can be sure to get all of the notes of the garlic, all of the notes of the rosemary into the meat and onto the meat,” he says. “Whereas if you just do one or the other, you are going to miss a whole range of flavor.” For his part, Bowers has a soft spot in his heart for mustard and vinegar, two ingredients that he claims to utilize just as frequently as salt and pepper. “The vinegar brings an acid and a nice roundness of flavor,” he says, “and mustard is the same way.”
When it comes to marinades, Bowers says that there is no such thing as too many fresh herbs, especially in the summertime when herbs are abundant. “You’d be surprised how many fresh herbs you can find in your neighborhood if you just take a walk down your street—every fifth or sixth house has a rosemary bush !” Does Bowers advise pilfering from the neighbors’ yards to flavor his meats? “Absolutely!” he says with a hearty laugh. “Hell, invite ‘em over to eat! That’s what having a cookout’s about—fellowship, hanging out with friends—that’s what it is to me. I’m not firing up the grill to cook up a piece of chicken. If I’m firing up the grill, I’m inviting like 15 people.”
Ronnie Bowers’ basic
BBQ-style rub
(will cover a full rack of ribs with a little left over for basting)
1/4 cup mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 T paprika
1 tsp cumin
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch cayenne
Ronnie Bowers’
basic marinade for beef
(steaks or kebobs)
1/4 cup red wine
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp mustard
1 T honey
2 T fresh chopped herbs
Combine.
Reserve a bit for basting.
Marinate beef for 2-4 hours, no longer.
