A Pretty Piece of Flesh...*

*Okay, who knows where that one is from???

(Margaret, you can't answer...I know you know this!)

So this evening I took that chuck roast out of my fridge and plopped it on the grill. In accordance with the recipe, I seared both sides on high (about 5 min. each side) then turned the grill down to low and gave it 25 minutes on each side on low.

I guess I should back up some in this story...

At about 4:50pm, I turned on the grill. Our gas grill is circa 2003, a Charbroil "Hybrid" grill (perhaps you see a trend here with hybrids?) that not only is a propane grill, but it also has an insert for using charcoal. We only do the charcoal thing about 15% of the time. Anyway, the ignitor is broken, so we have to take the riskier approach in turning on our grill: power up the gas, turn on the burners, and stick a lit lighter into this little hole at the bottom. Usually, this isn't too bad...we have one of those stick lighters with a flexible neck, so we just crane the neck into the hole, and flick the lighter on.

For some reason, today it decided to grace me with a fireball. The sides of my hair were hanging down a little, so the ends got slightly singed. My eyebrows took it a little, too...but no visible damage. Since my hair has a pretty blunt cut, I don't think there's any visible damage to it, either. Just stinks horribly.

Back to the story -- after the searing process, I stabbed the probe end of my thermometer into the roast and set the temperature alarm to 140 F -- medium rare!

Of course, what good is the temperature alarm when the thermometer was outside, and I was inside preparing the rest of dinner?

When I gave the roast its flip after the first 25 minutes on low, I couldn't help but take some pictures of how good looking this was becoming. The meat had taken in enough of the dark marinade to darken quite a bit, and the grilling was making it even darker in color. Nice!

From 2008 01 23 As...

From 2008 01 23 As...

From 2008 01 23 As...

The center of the roast was 125F when it was time to flip it over.

After the 2nd side did its 25 minutes, I checked the thermometer and it was reading about 138. Due to "carryover", I decided it was a good time to take the roast off the grill and bring it inside to rest. I brought it in, tented it with foil, and by the time I was done tenting, the thermometer was up to 140 and the alarm beeped ("MOOOOM! Dinner's ready!" -- my boys' typical response to any alarm in the kitchen).

From 2008 01 23 As...

From 2008 01 23 As...

(Pay no attention to how dirty my thermometer/timer looks here, it's grubby from my meaty hands, and has since been cleaned :-)

I worked so hard on a good roast, I merely served it up with salad and rosemary ciabatta rolls (like that bread you get at Macaroni Grill?) The guys devoured the meat...the boys complained about the rosemary flavor to the bread. Whatever.

I think this would work out really well on a London Broil.