Saturday-night-college-football grilling:  one ribeye, a baked potato, and for dessert, an apple crisp.  Within 25 minutes of lighting the coals, my Big Green Egg mini hits 550-600 degrees.  A few additional minutes’ preheating ensures a clean-burning fire for a perfect sear on the ribeye. Not only does the mini heats up in a flash, and it burns an incredibly small amount of charcoal to get to incendiary temps.

Next, I dialed the temperature down to 400 to cook the potato, achieved with a 3/4 inch opening at the bottom air vent and pinky-finger-sized opening at the top daisywheel air vent.   (Yeah, yeah, I should have cooked the potato first since it takes longer, but I was hungry for steak).  Ordinarily, no foil jacket is necessary on a Big Green Egg baked potato.  But I lightly oiled and salted the potato’s skin, so I didn’t want it to brown too quickly.  A bit of foil provides just enough protection from any leaping flames.

For dessert, an apple crisp:  I added an 8″ round baking stone, waited 20 minutes for it to heat up at the higher temperature, then baked the apple crisp at 350.  The crisp cooked quite a bit faster than I expected (translation:  it was a bit more browned at the edges than usual)!

The crisp is made from one of those great non-recipes that allow for expansion, contraction, and improvisation….peel, core, and dice 1 apple for every 2 servings.  Toss the apple chunks with cinnamon & sugar in a bowl.  In another bowl, combine equal parts softened butter, rolled oats, flour, and brown sugar to make a crumb topping (about 1 T ingredients for each apple used).  Put the apples in an oven-proof (grill-proof, in my case) dish and sprinkle the crumbs atop.   Bake until browned.  Nice variations:  add plumped raisins, dried cherries, or fresh blueberries to the apples, chopped pecans to the topping, or toss in a teaspoon of finely chopped candied ginger.  It’s all good….