As you may have guessed by our lack of blog posts, our summer has been a bit hectic. We’ll be doing a few catch up posts talking about what’s been going on here in Portugal! Don’t worry, all is well (eggcellent even) but it did feel like the last few months disappeared before we were able to blink.

Around our birthdays we had a major house project nearing completion (more on that later) and decided to invest in some other house improvements to celebrate the various milestones. I get to talk about our first month with a new outdoor cookery option – a Big Green Egg.

At some point in our first rental on Hawaiian Avenue in Medford, OR around 2002, Michelle and I definitely got a cheap Weber knock off. Something like this:

Honestly, the picture above is too nice. But you know the type – load the bottom with charcoal briquettes, spray them with a 1/2 gallon of lighter fluid, nearly die in the explosion, wait 10 minutes, try that whole thing again, and eventually cook up a couple hot dogs. It worked.

When Michelle and I bought our Medford house my family bought us a gas grill as a housewarming gift. Something like this:

It was a great present (thanks family!) but I was always horrible at using it. It had mysterious hot and cold zones, some of the burners clogged and just wouldn’t light. It was a scary place where spiders lived in greasy abodes. At one point we were having a murder mystery dinner party which involved making individual cornish hens for all our guests. I followed the recipe by loading up the grill, closing the lid, and returning in about 10 minutes. The hens were literally ablaze, charred beyond recognition as edible food on the outside and still raw on the inside. Michelle was seriously displeased. Thankfully some rotisserie chickens saved the day but that disaster haunted me for many years. I wish I had a picture of that inferno.

None of this was the grill’s fault, it was probably our fault for cooking something like bacon on it and not cleaning it. An acquaintance even came over and made some really good ribs on it one time. I think the extreme variances in temperature in Medford didn’t help as the summers were blazing hot and the winters were very cool and consistently rainy. The poor grill was neglected and certainly never mastered.

Michelle and I have talked about eventually setting up an outdoor kitchen on our terrace in Urgezes, since it will help control the indoor temperature in the summer and humidity in the winter. We weren’t quite ready to go full bore into that project, but did decide to splurge on a very nice grill.

I knew that I didn’t want to go back to a gas grill and we definitely wanted versatility. I’ve never smoked anything in my life but I’d like the opportunity to try. Traditional Portuguese grills are multi level stonework affairs. We had one at our Olhão rental and I found it to be tricky to use and inefficient at maintaining heat because there is no way to really close up your cooking area.

Also, cleaning it was a real hassle, sending charcoal dust everywhere. Modern enthusiasts seem relatively split between pellet smokers (like a Traeger) and kamado style (the Big Green Eggs). Michelle’s dad recommended pellets, but we chose the kamado style because it seems to provided a bit more overall flexibility and isn’t reliant on electricity.

We got a package that included a large Egg, a stand with counter space, and the basic system that allows you to change between direct and indirect heat. We have both standard grates and cast iron. We also added on a pizza stone and an “Eggspander” which allows you to have up to three levels to cook on within the grill, or two if using indirect heat. High temp gloves and some other accessories rounded out our very large order (the grill was supplied from a dealer in the Algarve).

The biggest drawback with a kamado is temperature control. You can buy electronic doohickeys to do that part of the job but I wanted to understand how to do it manually. Also, for your first two grills you aren’t supposed to go crazy with the heat. We started out with a beef stew.

I don’t think I ever considered cooking stew in a grill before, but I will definitely be using it for stews and chilis going forward! This turned out great and illustrated how hard it can be to bring the temperature back down if it gets too hot. My first impression was that it holds temperature forever while burning almost no coal. Another benefit is that the grill is set up to reuse unused charcoal, you just close everything up after cooking and the fire dies out automatically.

Next we cooked a whole spatchcocked chicken over root vegetables.

The Portuguese chickens run a bit smaller and my heat got a little higher than I wanted but neither of us had any complaints with this first attempt. Now that some low temp cooks were out of the way I was ready to turn up the heat!

We put some potatoes, cheese and onions in tinfoil, charred some vegetables, seared off a steak, and grilled a pineapple as a bonus. My mouth is watering now just remembering it, especially those potatoes!

We found a recipe for chicken breasts and I grabbed some sweet corn and padrón peppers to go with them. The peppers are a common appetizer here and rumor has it that one in twenty is supposed to have a real spicy kick. I love them but after eating at least fifty since we moved this is either a lie or the “kick” is so mild that it doesn’t even register on my palate. Sweet corn on the cob is also near impossible to find so we bought a pre cooked two pack and charred them on the grill.

We were ready to try sharing some of our grilled food and found a lamb kebab recipe. Our friend Jorge came over and it totally satisfied my kebab craving. For a grilled dessert we did a foil wrapped apple crumble which was fine but a bit dry, so ice cream was a must.

Jorge would join us again for our first shot at pizzas on the Egg. I got the temp up around 500/550 degrees and baked off four pizzas. I used homemade crust on three and store bought for the fourth. They all came out great, but I really needed the temp to hold closer to 500 – some of the crust really needed to stay on the grill for another minute, but the bottoms were cooking too fast. The homemade crust was the champion in the bake off and we won’t be using store bought again. Also, one of the pizzas used some leftover anchovies we had and they also might not feature on future pies. They were delicious in the Niçoise salad we made for Michelle’s birthday but were way to strong for our taste on pizza.

Finally, it was time for a real party! We had nine friends coming over so I started by doing my first long slow grill, cooking pulled pork for 11 hours straight! I also prepped some homemade BBQ sauce and got two chickens ready the day before.

Every time I had a pulled pork sandwich I said “I could eat five of these in a row” and I meant it! I could do a five stack right now! We also did two whole chickens and burgers for the first time. I made a potato salad (ended up bland), and Michelle did deviled eggs, pasta salad, and a bunch of other prep. Off the grill I also did raspberry lemon bars which turned out perfectly sour and yummy.

Share your grilling adventures in the comments! If you want links to any of the recipes I talked about, also mention them there and I’ll post them in the replies.

I hope everyone else is having as delicious a summer as we are!