Grilling Recap: Sweet Tea Pork and Trying Out Salmon

Last summer was unquestionably the year of the ribs, as we tried out many different ways to cook these iconic grilled delicacies - from cherry rubbed ribs to injecting them with homemade root beer BBQ sauce.

We may not have done nearly as many rib cookouts this year, but the 2013 season was still packed to the brim with delicious grilled dinners, like our crowd-pleasing Asian chicken skewers, or the grilled lamb feta sliders.

This summer's grilling is now winding down to a close, and looking back there's still a good deal we haven't covered here at Six-Seven-Eight, so today we'll quickly recap some interesting things we made you might want to try for yourselves.

Rubbing and injecting ribs always results in great flavor, but if you don't want to spend hours cooking a huge rack of ribs over indirect heat, you can get awesome results with just plain old pork chops (or beef or chicken!) Here we're going to make sweet tea pork chops. To save time we're using a store bought rub, but a homemade tea rub could be delicious, and it would let you experiment with all kinds of fabulous flavors (just make sure to get loose tea, not the bagged kind).

While the rub is store bought, of course the sauce won't be! Here are the ingredients for our sweet tea BBQ sauce: molasses, a can of sweet tea (experiment with different brands and flavors!), liquid smoke, worcestershire sauce, ketchup, ginger, orange juice concentrate, and garlic and onion powder.

We've covered how to put together BBQ sauces pretty extensively in the past, and if you need a refresher, check out our look at making smoky raspberry sauce right here.

Our rubbed and sauced up pork chops are getting cooked over direct coals along with some corn (which always tastes better grilled).

Of course you'll want to baste the chops with extra sauce after turning them over for more flavor. Man did these turn out great!

You may notice we don't do much in the way of seafood at Six-Seven-Eight, as Megan isn't a fan of things with gills or fins. For one weekend grilling I did finally get to try out some salmon, however. Here I've got two salmon fillets, one coated with a mixture of mayo and dill, and the other coated with lemon juice and a sprinkling of pepper.

We're also going to be grilling up a selection of sliced bell peppers and partially boiled potato wedges.

We got this nifty grilling skillet that prevents smaller things like sliced veggies from falling through the grating.

Here's my salmon cooking, along with some bratwursts for our non-seafood eating guests.

The salmon turned out well, but I'd really like to try them in different ways, like using grilling cedar planks. Here Megan has turned her bratwurst into a delicious meal on a bun with a side of grilled veggies:

Thanks for stopping by, and check back soon for a lot of amazing things we've made lately, from baked vegetable fries to Asian style meatballs and much more!