Your feet are perpetually cold, you’re wearing more layers than a lasagna, some mornings you can’t find your car in the driveway under all the snow…and yet all you can do is think about barbecue: the sizzles when the meat first makes contact with the grill, the way veggies char around the edges, the caramelization that happens when a good BBQ cooking sauce meets direct heat.
The good news is that you don’t need a barbecue to eat barbecue this winter. All you need is an oven (with a broiler), Shan Foods’ BBQ Cooking Sauces and a little creativity.
The first step is to ensure your meat is properly marinated. Marinating your meat for a few hours can help you achieve the big, bold barbecue flavours you’re craving.
Celebrity chef Richard Blais, best known for winning Top Chef: All-Stars, likes to marinate boneless, skinless chicken thighs in Shan Foods’ Tandoori Cooking Sauce (one of his “favourite spice blends of all time”) and chicken wings in Shan Foods’ Chicken Tikka Cooking Sauce.
“You can see that brilliant colour in there,” says chef Blais while using Shan Foods’ cooking and simmer sauces in his backyard. “The fragrance of all of these spices…this is going to take our wings to the next level.”
Now it’s time to turn on your oven’s broiler. It doesn’t exactly have the same charm as sparking the igniter and firing up the old barbecue but, with some careful tinkering, you can get similar results.
Outdoor grilling and indoor broiling have a lot in common: they both use intense direct heat to cook foods. The big difference between the two cooking methods comes down to fat: when working with meat indoors, you’ll likely need to put in a little work ahead of time to trim extra fat to keep your kitchen from looking like a scene from the movie ‘Backdraft’. You’ll also want to invest in a broiler pan to capture dripping grease.
You should also keep in mind that your oven is a bit of a control freak. Unlike a barbecue, which maintains a steady form of direct heat via flame, your oven has a thermostat that controls its internal temperature to keep it from getting too hot. When your oven reaches a certain temperature, the broiler will likely turn off, which will cause your food to bake in the excess heat instead of cooking by direct heat.
This is bad news if you’re attempting to replicate the barbecue experience like the one chef Blais expertly executed in his backyard using Shan Foods’ BBQ Cooking Sauces. In order to ensure your food is broiled, not baked, you might need to open your oven door every now and then to let some hot air escape. This will allow you to keep a close eye on broiling progress (is your sweet and smoky Tandoori Cooking Sauce caramelizing yet?) and will also work to keep your broiler engaged.
With a little care and creativity and Shan Foods’ assortment of cooking and simmer sauces, you can still cook like a Top Chef and get the barbecue food you crave in every season. Go ahead and eat barbecue this winter!
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