The Big Green Egg ceramic grill is incredible because of its flexibility. You are able to set up your Egg up for direct cooking, similar to a regular grill, to barbecue chicken. With only one additional component you can set up your grill to become a slow smoker that is able to do smoking “low n slow” all day long! You can also use your Egg as an oven to cook up bread, pizza or even cookies.

The traditional grilling set up is commonly known as direct cooking, because you are cooking your food directly above the hot coals. Simply set your Stainless Steel or Cast Iron Grid right on top of the Fire Ring, and you are ready to grill direct. Many Eggheads can lift the level of their cooking surface with extenders or lower their cooking surface by taking out the Fire Ring to set the grid right on the Fire Box.Shifting the level of the cooking surface affords you more control over the style of heat your food will encounter; make the grill surface higher to avoid the flames for grilling vegetables, and drop the cooking surface to quickly sear pork chops. Direct grilling is commonly used for steaks, hamburgers, fish, pork tenderloin, and vegetables.

The Plate Setter Accessory is a heat barrier sold by the Big Green Egg manufacturer. If you possess a Plate Setter, you are able to use your Big Green Egg for indirect smoking. To configure your Big Green Egg for indirect barbecuing simply set the Plate Setter right on the Fire Ring with the legs facing up, rest a drip pan full of water on the Plate Setter, and then place your grid on top of the Plate Setter. If you are baking pizzas you can put your ceramic baking stone directly on the grid and you are ready to grill cook indirectly.The basic concept behind indirect smoking is that your meat is indirectly exposed to the fire, so it roasts via convection and radiant heat. This cooks the food slower than exposing it to direct heat, and is the only choice for true smoking. If you want to slow smoke brisket, pulled pork, or ribs you will need to do it via indirect grilling.

If “low and slow” isnt your thing, you can make use of the Plate Setter to change your smoker into an outdoor oven. Even though the fire is being blocked by the Plate Setter, the internal grill temperature can reach as high as 600F and allow you to cook out of this world brick-oven style pizzas. Just about anything you could bake in a normal oven you can roast using the indirect cooking set up of the Big Green Egg.

One of the most difficult things for a cook at home to make is a flavorful sauce. A great sauce will cover some of the worst cooking mistakes, enhance most of the best cooking successes and make you appear to be a home cooking genius.

Cooking a sauce means adding flavor, texture, and appearance to your home cooking dishes. A sauce or gravy is made of three simple ingredients: liquid, thickener, and flavorings. When you need easy cooking ideas for cooking sauces at home, you need only think of these three things.

Liquid for Your Sauce

If youre making a chicken dish, youll probably want to add something like chicken broth. If youre making a tropical dish, you might add a fruit juice or add soy sauce to an Asian dish. Add the liquid that makes sense for the protein that youve cooked and once youre comfortable making sauces, be open to experimenting with new and different flavor combinations. Next, you will need to be able to thicken your liquid so that it sticks to your food for some great home cooking.

Thickener for Your Sauce

A sauce needs to be thick enough to cling to food and not wind up as a puddle on the bottom of the plate. The easiest way to thicken a liquid is with a cornstarch slurry. This is the same method that most of our grandmothers used to make gravy from the pan drippings of the holiday turkey. When you dissolve cornstarch in a cold liquid, then add it to a hot liquid (your sauce), it will gelatinize, and thicken the sauce.

While slurry is the easiest way to cooking sauce success, roux is the most widely used and most flavorful because of the fat needed to separate starch molecules. If youve ever noticed lumps in your gravy, its because groups of starch molecules have stuck together and only thickened on the outside of the group. Butter, oil, or solid fats in a roux help to “line up” the starch molecules for the introduction of hot liquid and their opportunity to individually absorb the liquid and swell, this thickening the sauce.

Flavoring for Your Sauce

The liquid that you used to create your sauce may give you enough of a flavor profile that you dont need to add any additional flavors. However, if there isnt enough flavor, add some! You could add garlic, onions, ginger or any number of different ingredients while you are cooking your sauce to help to liven up your home cooking.

No matter what the liquid, thickening agent or flavor profile you choose, you can find that cooking sauce is a skill youll enjoy and will lead to more easy cooking ideas without recipes. Before you know it, everyone will be begging you to have them over to your house for some great home cooking.

There are lots of foods eaten in Nigeria and I want to list the few popular ones and then a detailed guide on how to make fried rice – one of my favorites.

Are you married to a Nigerian man and finds yourself in a tight corner when it comes to making foods for him or worried about his appetite or yearning for home made foods, do you find it confusing that Nigerians in Diaspora often feel excited when they find Nigeria foods? The reason is simple; we used to say that – there is no place like home or home made food.

Most foods eaten in Nigerian are easy and often straight forward to make. The most popular food in Nigeria is Eba popularly called (garri). Eba goes with any of the many Nigerian soups and could be substituted with fufu, semo, amarla or wheat meal.

Eba and fufu are by-products of cassava, while fufu is made by fermenting cassava for 3 to 4 day and sieving out the chaff, eba is often simpler in making. Eba which is also called (garri) is made by peeling off the back of cassava, then grounding and frying on a dry hot pot.

There are lots of soups eaten in Nigerian that can go with eba, fufu, or semo. The most popular Nigerian soup is the egusi soup (melon) it is often very easy to prepare or at least very easy for me to prepare. Egusi soup can also be eaten with white rice.

That’s just about few of the Nigerian popular foods I just want to focus specifically on how to cook fried rice – The most popular Nigerian recipe. Fried rice takes about one to two hour to prepare and the real work is the preparation of things used in making fried rice instead of the actual cooking.

Ingredients include:

3 cups of rice
1 to 2 table spoon-full of curry powder
2 ball of onions
Medium sized cabbage
2 to 3 medium sized carrot
11/2 cups of chopped green beans
About 1/5 kg of liver
Meat of choice (beef, turkey, chicken) most people prefer chicken in Nigeria
2 to 3 cubes of maggi
green peas (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste.

The preparation:
Parboil the meat with meat ingredients (curry/thyme powder, 1 maggi cube, 1 ball of onions and salt) for about 10 to 15 minutes. It is often necessary to parboil this meat with these ingredients just to end up with a tasteful meat.

Add more water to the meat and cook until it is soft for consumption. then pick out from the water and deep-fry in groundnut/vegetable oil (leaving out the meat water on the pot)

Chop the carrot, cabbage, green beans, green pepper, and liver then set aside on different bowls.

Then parboil the 3 cups of rice and cook white till it is about 75% done.

How To Make Fried Rice:

Like I stated initially that the cooking of fried rice in Nigeria is quite simple, the most tedious aspect is the preparation of things used in cooking it.

Set your cooking pot on fire, allow drying before adding groundnut/vegetable oil (the one used in frying the meat would do) use about 15 to 20 cl of oil, allow to heat then add the chopped carrot and green beans.

Fry for two to three minutes and add the peas (optional), add the curry powder to get a very yellowish mixture. (the curry powder actually give Nigerian fried rice its yellowish color.

Add the chopped cabbage, stir and add the liver and green pepper. Pour in the left over water from the parboiled meat, add maggi/salt and pepper to taste, make them a bit in excess because the rice will absorb most of the ingredients.

At this point you are almost done. Add the white rice, stir/turn very well, cover your pot and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. Serve with the fried meat and soft drink of choice.
This is how to make Nigerian fried rice; I told you it is easy.