{9 of 10} Beef Tenderloin and Grilled Veggie Skewers & Herb Potatoes

The weather has been like a yo-yo lately and it is starting to drive us crazy. Last week the weather was so hot (reaching a high of 36^oC some days) and this week it feels like fall (at night it is dropping down to 6^oC). I'm keeping my fingers crossed we do not get a frost warning again. I am also hoping the Weather Man is wrong with today's forecast and it warms up a bit more for our annual ice cream trip that we always go on {it's a tradition}. If it does not warm up I think we will have to eat our ice cream in the car with the heat blasting like we did a couple years ago!

On the super hot days, it's so hot that we really do not feel like cooking inside, so we try to prepare most of our dinner on the BBQ. Another favourite at our place is grilled beef tenderloin and veggie skewers, which work great on the really hot days.  Whenever there is a good deal on beef tenderloin we usually grab it and cut it into steaks. When we are done we are usually left with chunks of beef which work out great to make a meal of beef skewers. This meal does take a bit of planning ahead because we marinate the meat in Italian Dressing the night before. It is also a bit time consuming chopping up the veggies and assembling the skewers, but the end product is very enjoyable!

For the veggies I use different coloured peppers (we prefer red, orange and yellow - we find they taste great when they are grilled), cherry tomatoes, red onion and if we are serving it to guests I add mushrooms.

 

 The finished product ...

 

 

We usually make herb potatoes wrapped in tinfoil on the BBQ also when we have these skewers (the entire meal is prepared on the BBQ -- BONUS).

 

For the potatoes we drizzle a bit of olive oil over top of the chopped potatoes and then sprinkle some chives, oregano, parsley, basil, garlic, cumin, red pepper and black pepper.  Then we throw them on the BBQ about half hour before the meat goes on and that's it!

 

 

 

Do you have a special marinate or seasoning you use on your meat? What do you add to your herb potatoes? 

 





TACO Burgers {7 of 10}

For those who had a long weekend this past weekend, we hope it was an enjoyable one for you. At our place we had a really busy but productive long weekend. On Sunday, we had dinner at my parents to celebrate my Dad's Birthday. On Saturday though it was a perfect day to use the BBQ and cook some Taco Burgers -- one of our favourite summer time meals. These guys are completely made from scratch including the taco seasoning.

Here's what we use for our taco seasoning.

 

The finished taco seasoning. You can find the taco seasoning recipe here.

 

 

We added about half the batch to make the burgers.

 

Before starting on the burgers slice up some cheddar cheese if you are planning on stuffing the centre of the burgers. We only do this sometimes as a treat (it is a bit time consuming).

 

 

For this specific dinner we used about two pounds of ground beef. 

 

 We added 1 egg, 1/4 cup of bread crumbs and 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire Sauce.

Mix everything together well.

 

 

Start to shape your patties. Once done add some sliced cheese like so ...

 

 

 

Then add the other half of the patty on top and pinch the edges together.

 

 

 

Your finished stuffed burger should look like this ...



If you just want to make a plain patty, they taste great to. A couple years ago we bought this Adjust A Burger Patty Press and it works great!

 

 

 

Here they are once they are done. The cheese seeped out a bit with these guys ...

 

 

 

To serve, we just put them on a burger bun, add salsa, hot peppers, cheese (if it is not stuffed in the centre) and that's it.  They are fun to serve to guests because they are often surprised with the melted cheese in the centre when they take their first bite!

Have you had taco burgers before?

Steak ... Oh BBQ Season {1 of 10}

For the next ten weeks we have decided to post the Top Ten Favourite dishes at our house. The posts will be in no particular order. It should be interesting to see how our current favourite dishes will change over the years to come.

I figured I would start with a dish we love to make during BBQ season - beef tenderloin steak, grilled peppers and Italian herb tomatoes sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. My mouth is watering just writing this post. Oh how we love BBQ Season. I think I like it a wee bit more than Byron because it gives me a break in the kitchen. Sometimes Byron cooks the entire meal on the BBQ which means there is nothing for me to do inside besides the prep and the big bonus ... there are less dishes for me to clean afterwards {yahoo}. The weather was nice and sunny throughout the day this past Saturday (a bit chilly), but that didn't matter because we were still able to BBQ. At night it was a different story - it hailed and snowed and was super windy - it's like Old man Winter does not want to leave. As I sit here writing this post at 5:45 a.m. the birds are singing away. Such a beautiful spring sound and a lovely reminder that Old Man Winter will have to give up soon.

As always, Byron did a wonderful job with dinner - all 4 of us thoroughly enjoyed it (Roxy loved the little fat treat she received at the end of dinner)!

Hope everyone has a good Monday!!