Meatballs of all sizes are all the current rage on restaurant menus. Chef Andrew suggests grilled meatballs are the best summer dish. They take burgers to a whole new level. He prepares them in slider form so they still have the meatball shape. Chef Andrew shares his proven recipe.
SoCal Restaurant Show
Co-Host Chef Andrew Gruel of Calico Fish House with “Ask the Chef”
- This is Tristan Beeman of the Wine Exchange in Santa Ana. You're listening to a spectacular vintage year in food news, the SoCal Restaurant Show. Cheers. - And welcome back. Sadly, there's the concluding segment of the SoCal Restaurant Show, but the better news is, is we're gonna be right back here with ya. Next Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon, right here on A.M.A.30, K-L-A-A, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. And you can also catch us on the A.M.A.30, K-L-A-A app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show. And it is my pleasure to welcome my co-host, Chef Andrew Grool of the Calico Fish House in the Sunset Beach area of Huntington Beach, back to his show. Chef Andrew, good morning and is always welcome. - Ah, it's good to be back. Good morning. - Thank you, Chef Andrew. And we should mention we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Chef Andrew, meatballs seem to be having their day on restaurant menus at all levels. And I'll share a funny encounter I had a couple of weeks ago. The guilty will go unnamed, but there is a high-end restaurant in Hollywood that has recently debuted that is in a space that was formerly a bakery cafe, if you'll believe it or not. And in terms of renovations and enhancements to this space, they didn't do a lot. And I'm mentioning this to kind of set the stage for what I'm about to tell you. They have wild boar meatballs on their menu. And it's an interesting presentation. It's three golf ball-sized meatballs. And Chef Andrew, that weighs in at $48. Yes, $48. Now, Chef Andrew, I was curious, but not $48 curious. Back in the world of reality, which is the world that we exist in, you are a fan of meatballs. And before we talk about this great summer recipe that you came up with, tell us about your sub-stack space, your area, because this is something that's available to our listeners. And you're a great guy. A lot of your content is available gratis. So give us a little bit of the background before we talk about grilled summer meatball sliders. Yeah, I mean, the basis of most of my social over the years has been just really trying to help people understand food and cook better, you know, going back and forth in the comments section about my favorite ingredient here, there, and also learning from everybody, right? So it's a two-way street. And some of my responses to a lot of the questions, they go a bit longer. So I said to myself, you know what, why don't I develop, you know, a bigger platform through which I can articulate these ideas, specifically through recipes or stories, and thus the sub-stack was born. So my goal was never really to build that out as a huge revenue source. The only content that I charge for is when I use, when I post recipes that we use in the restaurants, or recipes that I use in a commercial setting in any of the restaurants or have used in the restaurants. That's when I charge for that content. But really, I wanna say that's probably only two or 3%. So if the 300 recipes that are on the site right now, maybe 20 are paid, and the rest are all open and free. So that's my content on sub-stack, that's that American gravy or you can look up Andrew Brewer, pops up there, and that's it. Thank you very much for giving that opportunity. - Hey, Chef Andrew, editorial that is available to our listeners at no cost that is worthy is definitely worth promoting. And I must say, to your credit, there are a lot of celebrity chefs out there that charge for all their content. And parenthetically, some of that is not value received and I will leave it like that, particularly when you're paying for content and then they're using that to promote their food product or their pots and pans or the newest cookbook. Yeah. It's interesting. Now, Chef Andrew, grilled summer meatball sliders, you gotta give us the skinny on that. - Okay, well, it's kinda funny you start off with the story about the meatballs costing $48. - For Chef Andrew, three golf balls, I mean, wild boar, okay, but yeah, but go ahead. - I mean, that's just unbelievable. And the reason, though, is that in the culinary world and specifically the chef world, meatball is always a good food cost item because you can sell a lot of it because it's a lower cost on the menu to the consumer and the restaurant, right? Because typically you'll have a high cost item that may make a lot of money on, but because it's so high cost to the consumers, you only sell a few of them. Well, meatball is one of what they call like a cash cow, right? High sales, high profit. So it's kind of funny that they did the opposite with it because when you develop a meatball recipe, you always want it. You can throw a whole bunch of different ingredients in there. Now, for me, taking kind of a piece of that story to my own personal life is that, hey, I got four kids, family of six, prices have gone up significantly. So you're seeing meatballs and burgers on our whole menu often because ground beef is cheaper and then you can stretch it out by adding ingredients to it. So we always have meatballs at least once a week, but typically twice a week. So kick love the meatballs, it's great. Lauren and I kind of compete like she does a turkey meatball and I do the more exotic meatballs. But now that it's summertime, we always have our grill rolling because we don't have air conditioning in the house. The house gets really hot. You turn the oven on and that can last and linger for five hours. So I always have the grill on. So I said, oh, I'm going to make the meatballs, but I'm going to actually set them and then finish them on the grill and get that nice smokiness to them. So what we do is is that we make a traditional meatball and then I make the sauce. And I kind of like let them simmer in the sauce just for a second on the stove top just so you can set the outside. And then I take them to the grill and I finish them on the grill and then do slices of fresh mozzarella because that, even though it takes a little bit longer for it to melt than that shredded mozzarella, once it does melt, it's not that delicious tender melt factor. So throw it on the meatballs and then I just do really soft slider buns and it is like the absolute best summer slider item with the grill and the meatball and the extra flavors. It's the way to go. - And Chef Andrew, what you might add is is on your sub stack site right now. Not only do you have the full recipe for your grilled summer meatball sliders, but there's a nice little video that goes with it of you and Lauren putting it all together. And I must say, there's a little humor that's involved. - Thank you so much. I appreciate it. We think it's funny, but it's just the way it is. Her and I in the kitchen all the time and we do all the cooking together and we've been getting the kids involved a lot lately. I've even been posting some recipes with the kids on there that are really simple 'cause some of those entry level recipes where they can get their hands dirty. But it's funny 'cause when I post them on expert sample, people say, I know this is for the kids, but I'm gonna use it for myself even though I'm 42. So we've got some good stuff there and we do a lot of videos alongside the recipes. And if I cannot do photos alongside all of them as well, so there's the visual, intellectual component. - Chef Andrew, good content. Thank you and we will pick up the conversation next week. Food fans, that's our show. The tip of the toke to my co-host, Chef Andrew Grull. My thanks to Tony here at Angel Stadium and Technical Excellence. Kudos also to Adam Bell behind the scenes on social media. Next week, we're back with a fresh show and we are jam packed. We're proudly presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Proters and West Coast Prime Eats. Doctor in the dugout with Alan Beyer takes the field next, his second Olympic schedule, let going on in Paris. Dine well, good eating and be safe. [MUSIC PLAYING]