Recipe- Potato Discs with Cheese and Bacon On The @WeberGrills Performer Are Simple And A Crowd Pleaser

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Ingredients, 3 medium russet potatos, four thick cut strips of bacon, some shredded three cheese Mexican blend, canola oil, coarse salt, cracked black pepper, your favorite BBQ rub, sour cream and chopped scallions (optional).

First you select some medium sized russet potatos and pierce them with a fork about three times on opposing sides of the potato.  Then toss ’em in the microwave for 3 and a half minutes to soften them up.   Let them cool a bit so you can slice them into just under a quarter inch discs.

Coat with canola, peanut or olive oil, some coarse salt black pepper and if you have a little rub laying around give ’em a sprinkle of that too.  If you use a cheap aluminum disposable pan you can use that to toss the potatos in the oil and seasonings and then put it aside for use after they crisp up on the grill.

Set up your charcoal in the middle of the kettle and get your coals glowing red before you arrange the potato discs on the outside perimeter of the grate so it is offset of the coals.  I pretty much always use charcoal baskets so I can control where I want the charcoal.  If cooking steaks I want high concentrated heat to sear so I’ll place my steaks directly over searing hot coals.  But for this , we want the high heat to act as convection to crisp up the potato discs not burn them.

So after about 25-30 minutes offset along the perimeter of the grate they should be a golden crispy color like thick potato chips.  You can also experiment with the thickness.  I like a little beefier potato disc but you can make them thinner like chips.

Next take the pan that you tossed with the oil and seasonings and place the crisped up potato discs back in, it’s good if there’s a little residual oil in the bottom of the pan.  Next cover with shredded Mexican cheese or really any kind of cheese you’d like, you can use cheddar or sprinkle some shaved Romano on there.  Top with the bacon bits and close the lid for about five minutes to let that cheese melt in.  After that you can serve with a side of sour cream, garnish with some chopped up scallions, the sky’s the limit.  I cooked up some of Kate’s fantastic turkey burgers directly over the hot coals after spraying the grates with some non-stick spray while the potatos were in the aluminum pan offset the coals along side of the charcoal baskets.

On The @WeberGrills Performer Tonight @kfoley41 Turkey #Burgers, Potato Wedges With Cheese and #Bacon #bbq

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#Porkribs 7/22/16 on the @WeberGrills Kettle with assistance from the Performer

Results

Obviously I love BBQ cooking.  I love the versatility and ease of using two kettles but if I were only going to own one it would have to be a Performer.  That cart just makes everything so simple and convenient.  Being able to rest your tray of prepped food of hold your remote thermometer sensor makes things so simple.  When you factor in the gas assist for starting your coals, to me, it’s a no-brainer to go with a Performer.

When you consider the fact that unlike gas grills , a Weber Kettle can easily last you over 20 years with the bare minimum of care and you divide out the cost of ownership over all those years, I’d recommend you buy a Performer every time.  It’s only a couple hundred more and when you think that you probably only get 5 years on average out of a gas grill, the Weber Performer Charcoal grill with gas-assist will outlast a gasser by 4 times as long.

Anyway here was my set-up for some pork ribs that went on at 7:41 AM to be ready for lunch!

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Snake method charcoal set-up with apple chunks and cherry chips. Ribs slathered with frenches yellow mustard and then rubbed with the Paul Prudhomme rub.  Wait til pit temps hit 225 and then toss the ribs on offset the coals.  Then let er rip.  The top vent wide open bottom vent wide open.  Because we are using the snake method, only a portion of the coals are hot at a time as it works it’s way around the bowl.

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Results:

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Setting up the @webergrills kettle to smoke up some whiting courtesy of Danny Murphy Aboard The F/V Bantry Bay 

First deheaded,  gutted and scaled the whiting.  Then gave them a bath in some soy/sesame/ginger/red pepper flake marinade for about an hour.

Then took them out of the marinade and placed them on the grill  grates to dry for an hour or so while getting the coals set up for smoking using the snake method on the Weber Kettle.

When the temps on the Kettle reached 190 I placed the marinade and dryer whiting on.

Looking to bring them up to about 140 degrees internal temp. Check back in to see the results!

After 45 minutes I pulled off a small one and OMG!

Fillet falls right off the bone

I’d say that was a success!

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Drummies on the Green EI Code @WeberGrills SS Performer for our lobstermen @CaptJoeLobster #GloucesterMA

20160711_110235-01.jpegDusted with some Lowry’s Chipolte Cinnamon Rub and then cooked indirect high heat on the Weber SS performer for about 40 minutes, coating with Sweet Baby ray’s BBQ Sauce ten minutes before pulling them off. They didn’t suck.
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