Christmas is a week away but there’s still plenty of time to shop for me that special griller/pitmaster/chilehead in your life. Here are 7 suggestions they’d love to find wrapped up under the tree Christmas Day.
6 Big Ticket Grilling Holiday Gift Ideas
If you hurry, you can still by me the pitmaster/chilehead on your list some really great grilling and barbecue gifts. Over the next three days I’ll be posting lists from big expensive gifts to stocking stuffers. Let’s start with the expensive goodies and work our way down. For purposes of our list, all of the items below cost at least $450.
Star Wars: The Grill Awakens
In nine days, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits movie theaters, hoping to avenge the accidental tragicomedy known as the prequels. People are flocking to theaters to see it. If, like me, you’re one of them, consider a tailgate party near the theater, complete with all this Darth Vader grilling gear I found for you on Amazon.com. Just make sure mom doesn’t find it in the basement. We both know she’ll throw it all out like she did my old toy Millenium Falcon after I left for college. Which is now worth a fortune. That I don’t have. Because someone threw it out.
Oven-roasted Potatoes Sprinkled with Rosemary, Garlic, and Peperoncino Powder
Potatoes are an industry standard when it comes to holiday cooking. They’re the bricks for building comfort food. Whipping up good mashed spuds isn’t exactly quantum physics. Transforming them into something special to be remembered, though, well, there’s a touch of art to that. Or you can use this Italian oven-roasted version from our Italian holiday feast feature.
The Great Montezuma Hot Chocolate Drink
“Everybody wants some… I want some too…” Van Halen wasn’t talking about hot chocolate when they wrote that but they might as well have been. Chocolate gets associate with sex more often than Craigslist. This hot chocolate is about as close as you can get to what they were singing about without getting buck nekkid and arguing over who gets to go downstairs for sandwiches and cigarettes afterward. We have Richard Sterling to thank for this wonderful libation. You’ll find it and more in this holiday spicy beverage guide at our sister site.
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Red Chile Ganache
Happy holidays, everybody. As we pull into the home stretch for 2015’s finish line, foodies like us find ourselves busier than the North Pole elves. Over the next few weeks, I’ll grill, smoke, bake, and post a storm of different recipes. One of them is this Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Red Chile Ganache from this spicy holiday dessert piece at Fiery Foods and Barbecue Central.
Panpepato (Spicy Chocolate-flavored Christmas Bread)
The turkey’s gone, the stupidity that is Black Friday is behind us, and now we’re on to Christmas. Your food options are a little more freestyle than Thanksgiving’s now. If you’re looking to get away from ham, geese, and mashed potatoes, how about going Italian? Dave DeWitt ran a whole Italy-style holiday feast in this feature story, and this Panpepato (Spicy Chocolate-flavored Christmas Bread) recipe was just one of the wonderful options from which to choose.
