Indoor grilling on the BlueStar range.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac correctly predicted a bitter cold winter for the Northeast, so I can see myself doing a lot of indoor grilling on the BlueStar over the next couple of months. It helps that Tom Thibeault of Adirondack Appliance* did a great job on refurbishing my Abbaka vent hood. I blasted away last night at the pictured kebabs and nary a wisp of smoke escaped into the room.
I don’t have a recipe for shish kabob but I do have a formula. 1 inch squares of a leg of lamb are marinated in olive oil, red wine, garlic and oregano and the veggies are marinated separately in a red wine vinaigrette. I use tomatillos, which hold up better on the grill, along with onion and green bell pepper.
The BlueStar grill is a “cartridge” which can be covered with a stainless plate when not in use (it provides a handy prep area) or swapped out for a griddle or two additional burners. The griddle only makes sense when cooking for a crowd, otherwise I would use a couple skillets. The one complaint I have about my BlueStar is the uneven heat in the large oven which is due to an always-on fan that makes the rear of the oven hotter than the front. Michelle Hines Abrams Thiebault, Tom’s spouse, uses their BlueStar for her catering business and tells me the solution is to always turn on the convection feature and use a temp 25 degrees below what you would set without convection. But I mistrust convection for some reason and whenever possible use the second, conventional oven which is wide enough to accept a half sheet pan in place of a rack.
By the way, we still get traffic on our post about Old Thermy, the predecessor to the BlueStar which we had to abandon because Thermador parts were are longer available from Bosch, the current owner of the brand. A number of readers have asked for a schematic of this particular model, the GCR484GG. You can find them and a lively conversati0n among Thermador owners if you look down in the (many) comments.
*Tom is now with Marcella’s, which also sells the full BlueStar line.
