Beer Onion Relish and Lemon Thyme Butter New Potatoes (BBQ Dishes Part Two and Three)

I posted part one of this bbq dish series last year during grill season and I'm only finally getting around to posting it! The onion beer jam makes a fantastic hostess/host gift, but only if you're making it within 48 hours of gifting. I'm hoping one of these days I'll find a recipe that can be preserved in mason jars, but for now the possibility of the wrong types of bacteria are too intimidating.
Neither of these is a main dish, but by the end of this post I hope none of my readers will mind all that much. I discovered the Beer Onion Jam nearly by accident while preparing a fancy-ish meal to bring on a foodie camping trip. When I made it up I didn't realize how similar it was to a French dish, confit l'oignon, until I stumbled across a post on one of google+'s food-loving communities, in fact my main community, foodies+. The confit stores very well if poured into a sterilized jar and I have to admit I'm still tinkering with a version of my onion jam recipe that will do better in the long term. As for the potatoes...my word, the fluffy baked-in-butter potatoes have my vote for side dish of the year! Lemon zest and Thyme add a lovely combo of citrus fragrance and smoky herbaceous-ness, and the absolute best potato to use in this dish hands down is yukon gold. A really good dark beer is required for the Onion Jam; the few times I've tried to use a cheap beer the liquid in the jam tasted sort of dirty and very salty.
I'm sure you're wondering how a dish is made up "by accident"; well, while planning the meal I wanted to complement the flavor of some delicious organic pork sausages I planned to grill. I came across a recipe suggesting a beer-onion-garlic marinade for pork sausages. According to the recipe the sausages would be simmered for awhile in beer. The cooking liquid smelled so delicious while cooking that it made me realize reducing the liquid and bottling the result would make for a fantastic relish. As it turned out, it was a big hit! It lent an amazing flavor to our grilled sausages. We ended up with a lot more relish than we could use, so I'd recommend using the liquid to braise some sausages for you and your family the night before attending or hosting a big bbq, then reducing the simmering liquid, pureeing the results and serving it up at the next day's bbq alongside your other hot dog/sausage/hamburger condiments. It tastes amazing with a little mayo on a grilled pork sausage.

Beer Onion Relish

2 slices uncured, thick cut bacon, sliced into 1/2" pieces
1 1/2 medium yellow onions, roughly chopped
18 - 24 ounces good dark beer (a stout or a porter from a brewer whose beers you enjoy)
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. In a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium flame, cook bacon until crispy and fat has been rendered.
2. Add onion, garlic and black pepper, and stir to coat. Add beer to just cover all ingredients.
3. Add in bay leaf and mustard powder and reduce heat to low.
4. Simmer, uncovered over low heat until liquid reduces by at least half.
5. Once liquid has reduced, remove from heat and allow jam to cool before pureeing mixture. Serve as a condiment with grilled sausages and burgers. It is amazing on the same bun with mayo, particularly mayo with a little horseradish mixed in!

Lemon Thyme Butter New Potatoes

12 - 14 smallish new yukon gold potatoes
2 sprigs with of thyme leaves (strip leaves off and discard woody stems)
Zest of 1/3 lemon
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
Salt, to taste (I use around 1/2 teaspoon, but I much prefer potatoes that aren't lacking in it)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste (3 or so twists of the grinder into your mixing bowl ought to do it)

1. preheat oven to 42 degrees.
2. In a mixing bowl combine butter, thyme, salt, pepper & lemon zest. Add in scrubbed whole potatoes and toss to coat.
3. Spread in a single even layer on a cookie sheet and bake for 25 - 35 minutes, or until fork tender.

Enjoy alongside your grilled mains.*

*If you want to cook these on the bbq alongside your grilled mains, spread them out in a sing layer on aluminum foil, then cover with foil and crimp top & bottom foil together to seal in steam escaping from potatoes. Depending upon the size of the potatoes they'll need to cook on the grill in their foil packet for 45 - 55 minutes. If you're going to grill I'd highly recommend grilling up some olive, salt & pepper rubbed spring onions (all one piece, but white & light green parts only--discard dark green rougher top parts) until tender and somewhat more translucent and then slicing them and adding them to some mayo to make an unbelievable dipping sauce for the potatoes.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and I welcome your feedback!

Post Script: Sorry for the low quality photo; those potatoes were make, then gobble!

Greek Style Lamb Sliders with Drippings-Finished Oven Fries

In part, this entry is to make amends for all the time I've spent away from this blog lately, training for my new job; but I mostly wrote this because spring is on its way, and as the weather starts to warm up, I dream of the grill, which makes me think of burgers. Since spring is still in its early phase I wanted to incorporate that symbol of early spring, lamb, but do it in a playful way. I remembered a long ago menu for a bbq I had thrown for my friends to celebrate early spring in New York City--in particular the greek style lamb sliders with yogurt herb dressing that everyone gobbled as fast as I could grill them up. In my effort to make amends I'm also including a recipe for oven fries with thyme, which not only pair well with the sliders, but are also incredibly easy to make. I used roasted garlic in the lamb burgers, to add moisture and sweetness, and it was really worth the extra effort to make it. I just preheated the oven to 400, peeled away the papery outer layers of skin around a small head of garlic and cut the tips off of the cloves, exposing the garlic, brushed it with olive oil and put it in a muffin tin, covering the top with tin foil in the oven for about 35 minutes.

We've been having a spate of unusually cold weather for the season, so I had to forgo grilling and pan fry these instead. If you also have to pan fry, the upside of it is that the drippings, when poured over the fries, make for an absolutely delectable treat.

Thyme Oven Fries

2 lbs. medium yukon gold potatoes, cut into wedges
3 sprigs of thyme
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (this stuff is really spicy!)
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Parboil potatoes for 3 to 5 minutes, until they are just starting to be tender.

3. Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of your roasting pan and put in potatoes; toss to coat. Strip the thyme leaves off of the woody stems into the pan. Add cayenne, salt and pepper and toss to coat.

4. Roast in oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until they can easily be pierced with a fork.

Optional: Add drippings from the lamb burgers after they've all been cooked up and toss to coat.

5. Serve with greek style lamb burgers.

Greek Style Lamb Burgers with Yogurt Herb Dressing


For the Dressing:
8 ounces plain greek yogurt
1/2 bunch oregano
4 sprigs thyme
zest of 1/4 lemon
(optional) 1 teaspoon honey - only use if the dressing is distractingly bitter when you taste it

For the sliders:

2 lbs ground lamb
1 cup steamed petite green peas
6 cloves roasted garlic, smashed into a paste with 1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinamon
3/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
Juice of 1 whole lemon

1. Make the dressing: put oregano and thyme leaves (strip them off of the woody stems) into the food processor on low for a few seconds. Mix herbs into yogurt, along with lemon zest. Mix well and taste. Add honey, if needed. Remember, the burgers will be a bit on the sweet side, so you may want the yogurt to provide contrast to that.

2. Mix all slider ingredients together well, then form ten small patties, about 3 ounces each. Add olive oil to hot skillet and place as many sliders into the pan as possible. Cook the sliders on medium heat without flipping them for 4 minutes, covered with tinfoil. Flip and cook covered for another 3 minutes, or until they're no longer pink in the center. Repeat until you have cooked all the patties.

3. Serve patties on a toasted mini bun or dinner roll with a dollop of yogurt dressing and a big, crunchy slice of cucumber. Fries on the side.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and I welcome your feedback.