Last Week's Easy BBQ

My first recipe for the blog was from a book called 'The Weeknight Cook', and it was a simple BBQ beef sandwich. I made it a week ago, but work, meetings with our real estate agent and other scheduled events (like a burlesque show on Saturday) have brought another Monday before a new post.

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
- salt & freshly ground pepper
- 1 1/2 cups barbecue sauce
- sandwich rolls

Execution:
Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Saute the onion and garlic over medium heat until softened. Add the beef, season with the salt and pepper, and cook until browned. Add barbecue sauce and reduce heat to low, cooking until meat is coated and sauce is heated through. Assemble beef into sandwiches on toasted rolls.

There was also a coleslaw recommended to accompany the meal:
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
- 1/2 head green cabbage

Now. I've made this recipe before, by the book, and it was pretty decent. The coleslaw, though, had an incredibly intense vinegar flavor, and was practically inedible. So this time through, for the coleslaw, I doubled the mayonnaise and dijon mustard, but I reduced the apple cider vinegar to a single tablespoon. At this point, it tasted much better, but it still needed something more. I was on the phone with my grandmother while I was making the meal, and she is an excellent cook - a treasure trove of recipes and tricks of the trade. We were discussing the various ways of making coleslaw, and she mentioned adding sugar to the recipe. Ding ding ding! I added a quarter cup of sugar to the slaw and mixed it up, and it tasted great. Honestly, if sugar is going into the recipe, I could probably add another tablespoon of vinegar, as well. I'll try that next time.

For the barbecue, I wanted to change it up a bit - not much, because the simplicity of the recipe is the reason I chose it for the evening, but it needed a little help. In the beginning I added another onion and three more garlic cloves to the saute. I also used two pounds of beef, but that's only because my fiance had purchased a two-pound container at the store, and I didn't feel like putting the leftover half-pound in a plastic container in the fridge and then forgetting about it. For the sauce, I used Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, which is a really good, really sweet and slightly smoky barbecue. To change it up a little bit, though, I decided to add a quarter cup of spicy brown mustard to the barbecue sauce, which came out to a 3 to 1 ratio. Mixed in and sauted with the beef and the extra onion and garlic, it turned out really well. It was a great combination of sweet and tangy flavors - although I think it tasted more like a really great and interesting sloppy joe than barbecue.

Overall, I really like how simple it is, and how easy it is to make a tasty sandwich with the recipe. The coleslaw is great for serving along with the sandwich, especially if you serve it on the sandwich. The combo of flavors with the BBQ and the coleslaw are really yummy.

I do have my grandmother to thank for the slaw, though - she totally saved it by mentioning sugar. After I added the sugar I called her back to tell her she perfected my slaw, which she thought both silly and funny.

Grade: B+ (because the effort required wasn't much)
Recommend to others: Yes, with changes