In Episode 004, Taryn talks to Mary Cressler and Sean Martin from the popular food blog Vindulge. They discuss BBQ and wine pairings, as well as the food journey that this wife and husband team has had, starting with wine and food writing, then developing grilling recipes, participating in BBQ competitions, writing a cookbook, BBQ catering, and now operating an online wine shop. They also get into the importance of local sourcing for Mary and Sean, both in terms of where they get their meat and other ingredients, and how where they live in the Pacific Northwest impacts the flavors and cooking methods they use. Plus Taryn has the duo go over a number of delicious BBQ recipes that they and their family love.
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Guest Details
Connect with Mary and Sean from Vindulge
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Bio: Mary Cressler and Sean Martin are a wife and husband team behind the popular food blog, Vindulge, where they focus on BBQ and grilling recipes with wine pairings. Combined, they have two decades of experience in recipe development, entertaining, writing, and professional cooking. They also recently launched Vindulge Wine Marketplace.
Resources Mentioned
- Vindulge Wine Marketplace
- Fire & Wine Cookbook on Amazon (affiliate link)
- Big Green Egg Kamado Grill
- Weber Kettle Grill (affiliate link)
- Traeger Grill Pro Series 575 (affiliate link)
- Vindulge Riesling Wine Guide
- Vindulge Pinot Noir Wine Guide
- Vindulge Guide to Champagne
Recipes Mentioned
These are some of the recipes mentioned by Mary and Sean in the episode, and they are on their food blog Vindulge.
- Smoked Whipped Cream
- Smoked Chocolate Pot de Creme
- Pork Belly Burnt Ends
- Maple Chipotle Cedar Planked Salmon
- Smoked Tri Tip & Wine Pairing
- Smoked Beef Plate Ribs
- Smoked Whole Chicken
Transcript
Taryn Solie: Hello grillers! I’m really excited for you to hear the conversation I had with Mary and Sean from Vindulge. They have a bit of a unique perspective as they have a lot of experience in both the food and wine industries, and we talk a bit about pairing smoked and grilled foods with wine. We also get into the importance of locality for Mary and Sean, both when sourcing their ingredients and developing their recipes. But mostly we talk about really delicious food cooked over a live fire and I can’t wait for you to hear our conversation around that. We go over so many meal ideas and it will definitely have you wanting to fire up the grill.
Before we begin, a quick reminder to please rate and review this podcast – it really helps and I would be so thankful for the support. And stick around to the end of the episode as there’s a special discount code Mary and Sean gave to podcast listeners for the wine shop they recently started. Now let’s get to the interview.
Taryn Solie: Hello today on the podcast, we have Mary Cressler and Sean Martin. Mary and Sean are a wife and husband team behind the popular food blog, Vindulge, where they focus on barbecue and grilling recipes with wine pairings. Combined they have two decades of experience in recipe development, entertaining, writing, and professional cooking.
They also recently launched Vindulge Wine Marketplace. Mary and Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Mary Cressler: Hi, thanks for having us.
Sean Martin: Thank you.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. Thank you for being here. I’m excited to get into the conversation today, which is going to be geared kind of around wine and barbecue. But before we get into that, I’d love to hear a little bit about how you both kind of got started in the food and the wine industries.
Mary Cressler: Sure. I think it all started. Oh, well, decade and a half ago, I started a wine blog in 2009. So Vindulge started a strictly a wine blog. I was studying for the court of master sommelier’s program and just wanted place to share what I was learning about wine. And since food and wine go hand in hand. Food eventually started to enter the blog.
We started writing about food, started writing recipes. And then a few years later, just out of sheer passion for barbecue and grilling, we just started focusing on barbecue and grilling. Cooking at home. That’s what our hobby was. And we eventually started introducing grilling and barbecue recipes to the blog.
And that’s when the blog really started taking off. So I think we took it as a hint that maybe this is where we should be focusing our attention. Um, I was still writing about wine at the time. I had become a freelance writer. I was writing for magazines and online publications. Um, about wine and food and wine pairing, but we really realized that that’s kind of where our specialty was and our niche was cause that’s when our traffic really started to just jump up and we realized, oh, maybe we have something here.
And so we really that’s when we started focusing specific on, on grilling and barbecue, but the wine component was always there and it has remained there ever since. Anything you want to add?
Sean Martin: Yeah. I like to joke that it’s literally evolved as we hang out on our deck. So we it’s like, we want people to feel like they’re on our deck with us cooking, grilling, uh, sipping some wine and, um, and it’s, it continues to evolve.
So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely something. And I, I give a lot of credit to Mary, all the credit to Mary, because her, her start in this whole, uh, industry was as a wine blog. And so the evolution has been fun to watch. And now that I’m full time with her and she’s my boss as well. Uh, the, the fun thing is we get to do whatever we want as we kinda look at the next chapter.
So, um, but I do love, and I think we thrive on that outdoor cooking experience. I think it’s a fun thing to do. There’s always new toys coming out to build recipes on. And so it is exciting.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. So where, so in terms of barbecue, how did you get, like, what did you start on? What, how has it kind of evolved? You know, what’s one of maybe your favorite, um, barbecues to grill on that sort of thing.
Mary Cressler: I think the very first one we ever had as a Weber kettle grill was just like a little dinky kettle grill that I bought for Sean. I think just when we moved to Oregon, like in 2005 ish, um, it was just the first thing to get started on. We were living in San Francisco prior to Oregon and in San Francisco, we could never have a grill cause we were always living in teeny tiny apartments.
So the first thing that Sean wanted when we moved to Oregon was to get started grilling. So that was the first grill I think we ever had.
Sean Martin: Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t talk about the lapse in judgment with a terrible gas grill.
Mary Cressler: Oh my God. No, he did way too much money on a really awful gas grill. That was the –
Taryn Solie: Oh no.
Sean Martin: Yeah.
Mary Cressler: We don’t talk about that.
Sean Martin: We, we didn’t know at the time that, you know, not all steel is the same and it’s going to rust, but yeah, the Weber is, uh, and was the first thing we cooked on, which I think is always important for us to stay grounded on because now we cook on a number of different cookers. Um, and the Weber kettle is such a universal and ubiquitous type of a cooker because it may seem simple, but it’s like the multi-tool of grills. It’s affordable. Uh, so it’s, it’s more money now, but for $140, you can get a basic kettle.
You can get all the tools for an additional $30 to grill hot and fast or low and slow. So, uh, but today we cook on a Big Green Egg, Kamado grill. We cook on offsets like a Yoder. We transitioned from the Weber kettle to a pellet grill. So we had a Traeger pellet grill at the time. It was one of the original pellets that were made in Oregon before they moved to Utah and off shore with manufacturing.
Um, that kind of hit the low and slow bug. So I think we did a lot of hot and fast grilling on the Weber. And once we ended up with a pellet grill, it gave us more opportunities to start smoking. And then from there it just ended up on the blog and we just kept adding to our tool chest of grills.
Taryn Solie: They just kind of build on themselves once you start going into it.
Sean Martin: Yeah.
Taryn Solie: So now you guys have had kind of quite a journey through – you started you know, you started with wine and you started merging it with food and barbecue. And you’ve also done some competition. You had a, or you have had a catering company and now you’re kind of merging into this kind of marketplace. So can you talk a little bit about kind of the stages of both food and wine that you guys have been through?
Mary Cressler: Sure. I think when we got started, when we were writing recipes and putting them online, I was also writing for another website, putting recipes on another website and getting was getting paid to write recipes for that website. Well friends, were eating our food and people were leaving feedback.
And I think at one point we just, we got curious, like, is this, are people just telling us they like it because they’re friends or because they know us is there or is our food really worthy? Is it really good? And so I think that’s when we first started into the barbecue competition arena. And when we did our first couple of barbecue competitions, I think we quickly realized that that wasn’t necessarily where we wanted to focus our attention, because we’re very creative with our grilling and our barbecue. With a barbecue competition, it’s it’s what we found, it was a little formulaic. We’re- you’re cooking for the judges, right. You’re cooking for the judges for a specific style. They’re looking for very specific things. They’re not looking for creativity. There might be a category or two where you can get creative, but we realized that what we wanted to focus on was a little more of the creative side of food.
And it was also around that time where we were getting asked by local wineries and other local businesses, if we catered. And if we wanted to do events. And at the time were like, no, didn’t really know what that was about, but we said yes, and we would figure it out. Um, so we started a catering company at that at the time, it was focused a lot on wineries cause that’s where we live out in wine country.
Um, and we were written up within our first year of catering as one of Oregon’s top wine country caterers, in a pretty big regional publication. And so we kind of took that as a sign that, oh, this is, this is a thing. And we started getting mentorship from local chefs just to figure out like, how are we going to do this?
How to- learning the logistics, all the details behind, behind the scenes.
Sean Martin: Well, you sound so calm right now. I think the first comment that came out was “oh crap”. I don’t know. I don’t know how many expletives we can share on- just say there was a different word we used. And…
Taryn Solie: Yes.
Sean Martin: Uh, it was one of those moments where like, oh, this is about to get real. Like it was dabbling before setting up here and there. And then all of a sudden, oh, this is the real deal. And we better get our stuff together so we can figure this stuff out.
Mary Cressler: But I think a little bit though, was we were looking, I guess, for a little validation, we just wanted to make sure, like we don’t, neither one of us went to culinary school.
We were just learning it as a hobby. And so we wanted to, I think we wanted to know, Hey, if we’re putting this on the internet and people are, we’re showing up on page one, you know, we want to make sure these recipes, they’re not just our moms and our neighbors giving validation. So we got that and I think it was a really good learning- we learned a ton and we also learned that our food is…our food’s really good.
Sean Martin: Yeah. Even when, even when someone on Facebook is like “it’s over cooked”.
Taryn Solie: And then did that lead kind of naturally into the cookbook.
Mary Cressler: Yeah. I think part of the cookbook experience was I think me being, starting as a writer, I think all writers kind of someday want to have a book. For us, it evolved into wanting a cookbook, wanting a place to put all of our recipes. Um, it was also a challenge that I really was looking forward to.
And so we kind of pitched the idea around. We found an agent and our agent is the one that kind of on behalf of went and started talking to publishers about our book. And it was really quick that we had quite a few, um, offers coming. Um, and so the Copa definitely came as a result of it. We had done a lot of the work.
We had the catering company, we were doing TV. Um, we’ve been on our local news program for quite a few years, just doing segments on cooking and grilling. And so I think all of those things kind of added up to our, our cookbook, our cookbook deal.
Taryn Solie: Nice. So you mentioned Mary, kind of the creativity that you guys like to explore with your barbecue and you’re in Oregon.
I’m in Seattle. Pacific Northwest is not really known for a big, to be a big barbecue region. Right? That’s not to say that there can’t be good barbecue, but, um, I’m wondering, kind of. Like how you have merged the two in, um, the recipes that you put out.
Mary Cressler: Do you want to talk to this, since I’m kind of hogging the conversation.
Sean Martin: Sure. Well, I think when it comes to Pacific Northwest barbecue and live fire cooking, one of the first things that comes to my mind is the first people that lived here for thousands of years have leveraged, you know, kind of the, the farm to table experience through things like smoked all their salmon.
Um, and I, and I think that there’s gotta be a nod first to, to the First Peoples in how they cooked, uh, using cold and hot smoke. Um, and I think some of our more popular content in the beginning was seafood like smoked salmon, um, non lox based, so a hot smoked salmon, um. And then I think the other component is that we are all about fusion, you know?
No one’s from here anymore. So if you, if you, if you’re talking to your neighbors and friends where you’re from doesn’t mean like what part of Oregon or Washington. It’s typically, um, yeah, I moved here from New York or Texas or wherever. And so I think one of the joys that we experience is that there’s no rules here.
So it’s about fusing what we love. And what we love about the region from a protein or, or the vegetables. Um, and I think that really comes through in our food. And I don’t know if that directly answers your question, but I think it’s important to us to use as much as possible local beef, local lamb, local chicken.
Um, source at farmer’s markets, some of our vegetables, uh, and incorporate that into some of the storytelling that we’re doing for someone. So if you live in Arkansas and you’re following us, you’ve got that too. You’ve got all those producers. And so it’s really more about finding what works for you and then kind of incorporating that.
Mary Cressler: I think also there’s famous regional, you know, famous barbecue regions. We’re not from any of those, in the south, Texas. We’re not from any of those regions. So we don’t want to stake claim to being an expert in a specific regional style barbecue. Although we can cook those styles. We want to highlight where we live, right.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Mary Cressler: And not abide to any specific rules of how you’re supposed to cook a specific dish. Right. And taking what we have in abundance here. And there’s a lot of stuff in Oregon that is really cool. It’s lots of berries, mushrooms, you know, we’re the hazelnut capital of the world. Like there’s so many cool ingredients from this region that we want to showcase, cook with.
Um, and also with, we like to cook with fruit wood, because that’s what we have accessible. If you’re in other parts of the country, you’re going to use other types of wood as your fuel. And so I think it it’s really showcasing what we do, what we have available to us in the Pacific Northwest and saying, Hey, anything you can cook over here or in your oven, in your stove, you can cook on a grill. And so our whole motto is basically anything you can cook inside and you can cook on your grill or on your smoker. Um, and just taking people outside the box, people have this expectation of what barbecue and grilling is. They think it’s just, you know, ribs and brisket. You know, pork butt and it’s like, no, there’s so much more.
And so our whole goal is to showcase what all of the variety and you can cook vegetables. You can do desserts, you can do so many cool things on your smoker grill. If you just kind of get past what these regional barbecue styles can kind of trap you into at times.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, I, yes, I can totally see that. So then what are some examples that you would like for somebody who has not previously thought out of the box?
What are some recipes that you would suggest they maybe start with or think about differently, um, to cook on a grill or smoker?
Mary Cressler: Well, the first thing in my mind, you’re not what I would recommend to start with, but we have some really fun, like desserts we’ll smoke cream and use that cream to make smoke whipped cream or smoked like chocolate Pot de Creme, which is a fancy way of saying like a custard or pudding.
Um, but. I mean, what would you say?
Sean Martin: Well, I think one of the things that was one of our first viral recipes was taking a concept of burnt ends and turning it upside down. So instead of beef burnt ends, we did pork belly burnt ends. So, you know, that shook up people, uh, from Kansas and Kansas City specifically.
And they said those aren’t burnt ends and burnt ends is really a reference to a style of cooking. It’s really not meant to just be the point of the brisket that’s cooked in very specific style. We just did the same style, but with pork belly. And that was relatively easy to make. It’s one of our more popular recipes still.
And I think that’s a good example of how you can take something from an honored barbecue tradition and turn it into something a little bit different. Uh, I think smoked desserts, grilled, uh, candies. Um,
Mary Cressler: I think one good thing, depending, on what kind of grill folks are cooking on, is to try something that they traditionally do inside.
Something they would normally do in their oven and just mimic that experience on a grill. So if they’re roasting some kind of vegetable in their oven, try and get their grill up to a similar temperature and then try cooking it on the grill. So I think not changing a whole lot except for the vessel in which you’re cooking on.
Right. And then going from there. Um, so there’s, I mean, vegetables are a great example because you’re not. You’re not, I know a lot of people are really worried about checking temperature, right? Like with vegetables, it’s not about, oh, do you have to cook it to 165 degrees? I think that’s a good place to start.
If people are really curious is taking something that like a vegetable and just mimicking the experience on their grill or even something they might do in, um, like a skillet on their stove top. Just take that skillet outside and put it on your grill and get it heated up over on your grill and then cook the same dish outside on your grill. on the, on the, um- on like a cast iron for example.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. That’s I think I agree. I think that’s a great place to start. So we talked about barbecue a little bit. I’d love to get into kind of the wine pairing with the barbecue and Mary, this I think is kind of your forte. So what are some things, let’s start with what some things people might need to consider when they’re pairing wine with a barbecue dish.
Mary Cressler: The way I look at it is you have these rules. I don’t even call them rules I like to call them more recommendations for food and wine pairing in general. And we have, we have article after article on just kind of the basics of food and wine pairing both chapter in our book, fire and wine, and also on our website.
But the concepts are not that much different whether you’re cooking something that is not cooked on wood fire and something that is cooked on wood fire. The things you want to consider when it comes to more traditional grilling and barbecue recipes are the element of smoke, which I like to think if, if you’re cooking over a grill, smoke should be an ingredient.
It should be a background flavor. It should not be the dominant thing, right? It’s much like a, like a good wine. A good wine, there should not be one flavor element that’s dominating. If that’s the case, then it’s not balanced. And so smoke is one element, but also is it sauced? How much sauce is in it?
Something like a sweet, spicy barbecue sauce can be overwhelming to wine. Um, but I think those are the two biggest considerations is the smoke and if it’s sauced. Otherwise I think you’re going to follow the same kind of steps. Right? If, if a steak is cooked in the oven versus on your grill, you’re going to follow a similar recommendations, same thing with poultry.
Um, if the poultry is sauced it’s going to give you a little bit different, um, recommendations for wine versus if it’s not. Um, but I don’t see the recommendation. I don’t see it being much different whether you’re pairing food and wine with something that’s not grilled versus something that is, you’re just going to take in a few things into consideration.
Taryn Solie: Sure, sure. I think that makes sense. So what are maybe some of your, either favorite or classic food and wine pairings, particularly with things that come from that are grilled or smoked? Do you have any, you can think of.
Mary Cressler: I have a couple, one, two of my favorites actually are both in the book. Um, one of them is in the book and it’s also online.
It’s our maple chipotle cedar planked salmon. Um, it is an incredible recipe, it’s my favorite salmon recipe. And I like to pair that with a reisling. Which salmon for me, if you’re just cooking it, no sauce, nothing. I’d like to pair it with something more like a pinot noir. And that’s a classic pairing. But with this dish, because we have a little bit of spice and we have a little bit of sweetness with the maple glaze. I think it’s so good with the reisling, which is something that you don’t traditionally see paired with salmon. Um, I think my other favorite pairing, we have a recipe for a, um, grilled bone marrow. And when you grow bone marrow, like bone marrow gets really rich.
It’s almost like butter, but even richer and just, kind of, serving it over some toasted bread. I love that with like champagne, like sparkling wine or champagne, something that’s bright and effervescent, and it’s going to help through the richness of that bone marrow. And so to me, that’s a, a very surprising pairing and it’s so indulgent and so delicious.
So I love things that are just maybe a little bit that kind of you taste it. And you’re like, whoa, I would not have expected that.
Sean Martin: Yeah. I think one that I like is, um, tri tip. So tri tip is very popular on the west coast, part of the sirloin and, uh, in, in, in the mid part, um, very tender and we like to pair that with pinot noir. Uh, it’s it’s in a, wine, wine has developed this idea of rules where it’s like white wine with fish, red wine with meat.
And then when you get to the meat part, it’s always cab, merlot, these big bordeaux varietals right. Big California wines. And, um, we have several other winemakers who would agree that when you actually find the right wine pairing, it can go with a whole host of different wines. So if you have a great pinot noir, uh, it might be more on the bigger side.
It does pair, pair really well with like a tri tip. And so we like to also push a little bit for people to try things a little bit differently than maybe you would see on your traditional wine and food pairing charts and, and that’s, that’s, that’s a fun challenge too. And then the other thing is, um, minimal saucing. So…
Taryn Solie: Okay.
Sean Martin: I love sauce. Don’t get me wrong. I love, I love me a Carolina vinegar based sauce, and it does pair really well with wine. But I think a lot of times too, when we present some of our foods, if there’s a sauce, it tends to be more like a chimichurri or compound butter or something where you get that little extra flavor, but it’s not necessarily completely doused in sauce so that the main star could still be the meat, um, or the fish or, uh, the vegetables.
So I think, but then with the sauce aspect, as Mary mentioned, you can do a whole lot of fun things with different wines because the sauce may take on more of the flavor profile.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, definitely. This, okay. Well, those, I think those are some great things, things that are one thing about wine. I want to shift a little bit and talk about the cookbook.
So the second edition is coming out. The first edition came out, um, a couple of years ago. Can you tell us a little bit about the cookbook in general and then also what prompted kind of the second edition.
Mary Cressler: Sure. So the cookbooks original release date was April of 2020, which as we know is the very early days of the pandemic.
So our whole marketing plan, we had a multi-city book tour we were getting ready for. We are going to be doing events, cooking demos, all the stuff that all got canceled.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Mary Cressler: Because of the beginning of the pandemic, but you know, what we learned as people shifted to cooking at home, people had to cook at home.
And so I think for folks that came out with cookbooks, that time of- that time in our world, they, they, they tended to be fairly successful. And so I think people wanted to cook with, they wanted guides. They wanted to be able to have something to help them cook outside. Cause that’s what everybody was at home cooking.
Um, eventually we got to do some more events and, but. Our cookbook. Um, when you, when you get a cookbook, they only make a certain printing for the first, for the first edition. So our cookbook, this past fall, we went to, we actually went to order some because we were getting ready to do an event and found out that it was completely out of print.
So it, that, which just means that it’s sold out, the first printing had completely sold out. And so by the time our publishers went to order another printing, they realized that there was just, I mean, I think it’s. With books, with anything in manufacturing, like things were way backed up. And so they couldn’t get the second printing until the spring.
So the book is the same book. There’s maybe a couple of very minor changes, but yeah, it’s just the same book coming out in its second edition.
Taryn Solie: Great. And then what are some of your favorite recipes in the cookbook?
Mary Cressler: Oh my goodness. There’s so many. So the book is called fire and wine and it’s seventy-five wood-fired recipes all paired with wine.
And so we have some of your traditional chapters. We have, you know, your chapter on beef, chapter on poultry, um, chapter on lamb, because again, we’re in Pacific Northwest, lamb can be very popular here. Um, so we have, uh, we have a lot of really, really fun, wonderful recipes. I think I named a couple of mine already.
The bone marrow, the chipotle cedar planked salmon. We have a kind of a bourbon cherry marinated steak skewer recipe that’s-
Oh, that sounds good.
What are you, what are your pick favorites?
Sean Martin: And I think one that stands out is a reverse sear, New York strip. So it’s smoked first at low temp, almost in the style of sous vide. And then you finish it over high heat, either on the grill or cast iron pan.
So it’s a New York strip and a lovely cut of beef. And then we finish it with a savory granola. So it’s a duck-
Mary Cressler: A savory what granola?
Sean Martin: Savory duck fat granola.
Taryn Solie: Oh!
Sean Martin: So it kind of taking a play on, you know, just maybe doing a little spin on what you would call a sauce. Uh, we take granola and we slowly render it with duck fat, thyme, salt, uh, brings out a little, uh, savory component.
The duck fat makes it really crunchy and this beautiful texture. And after a couple of hours at a low heat, it is ready to just throw over your steak. And so that’s one of, one of my favorites. Um.
Taryn Solie: That sounds amazing. Oh my gosh.
Sean Martin: It’s fun. It’s fun because I mean, you can use that for anything. You can sprinkle it over lamb, you could just eat it for lunch.
Um, but, uh, yeah. And the other one I like is, is, um, our smoked babganoush. So it’s a, it’s a it’s, it’s kind of a play on, you know, as we travel or experience foods from other cultures. Um, we love Mediterranean food. We love Persian food. We love just things that, um, really bring out a lot of really fun, savory flavor profiles.
And so we smoked eggplant and turned it into a babaganoush and it turned out really well in this beautiful texture. And that’s another one that I really like because it just shows that you really can do different things using your smoker and that, and that one is really, really fun. And it is a great appetizer cause people always ask, well, what is this?
And you’re like, well, it’s smoked eggplant. Like, what? Yeah. What? Yeah, it is. And it’s good. Yeah, it’s like, mind blown.
I love it. Oh, that sounds I’m going to have, have to try that. That sounds really good. Well, this, this has been great before- we’re kind of wrapping up here, but before we go, I wanted to ask you both one last question is- and I ask this for everyone. What is one of either your current favorite or just kind of like all time, favorite things to cook or smoke? Sean, why don’t we start with you?
Beef ribs. Specifically plate ribs. I love smoking plate ribs because it takes about seven hours. It’s the whole process of managing the fire and I like it even better than brisket. And it’s tender and delicious. And so I think beef ribs is definitely one of my favorite things to cook.
Taryn Solie: Okay.
Mary Cressler: You totally stole my answer because he knows that short ribs-
Sean Martin: No, the plate ribs.
Mary Cressler: I know, but short ribs are cut up versions of the plate ribs and he knows that they’re cut. Um, funny story, I used to be a vegetarian, like way back in my twenties and short ribs was the dish that turned me back to the dark side and so it always has, like a place in my heart.
And when you smoke them, it’s just like the most amazing food. Um, I would say the thing that we, we cook the most is we smoke a whole chicken on our- on the smoker, almost every Sunday. We just do a whole roasted chicken. We usually do two. Um, you can use a whole roasted chicken for anything, for dozens upon hundreds of different uses for it.
And we always make chicken stock with the carcass. It makes great stock.
Taryn Solie: It’s the best. Yes.
Mary Cressler: And it’s, it seems so simple, right? Like, but I say that’s, that’s the one we probably do the most because it helps feed so many other meals throughout the week.
Taryn Solie: So what are some of those other meals then that you love to eat with the chicken.
Mary Cressler: Everything.
Sean Martin: Smoked chicken salad, uh, smoked chicken enchiladas. Chicken tacos.
Mary Cressler: Do a lot of tacos, a lot of nachos.
Sean Martin: A lot of nachos covered with chicken.
Mary Cressler: Use it to make some smoked Buffalo chicken dip when it’s like game season.
Sean Martin: Yeah. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s pretty versatile. Um.
Mary Cressler: Soups.
Sean Martin: Sometimes we spatchcock it and, and try and keep the whole parts so that we’ll do a whole part dish. Um, or we might try and render out, uh, and get the skin crispy with some other dish, but yeah, soups, um, smoked chicken noodle soup is awesome.
Especially when you do smoked stock. Uh, so there’s a lot of fun things. So basically like whatever you typically would do with chicken and we basically just put smoked chicken and. Uh, and if you get a big enough breast and we do this a lot with turkey we’ll just smoke a turkey breast and then slice it up with a slicer.
And then you’ve got your sandwich meat. It’s so much cheaper than going out and buying smoked turkey breast. So you can get the whole one for like $6.99 a pound. Um, and then you smoke it and then you’re not paying $11.99 a pound for the sliced, you know, and you get to do your own thing with it. So that’s fine too.
Taryn Solie: Are you typically getting your like raw turkey breasts from a butcher? Or just grocery store?
Sean Martin: Well it’s, it depends a lot of times we’re buying our meats locally sourced from farmers or through wholesale programs, because we’ve reached a point where we’re wholesaling, where we can pick and choose our farms because they may only sell through wholesaler. Um, and so that tends to be where we buy our meats.
Uh, local butcher shops would be a close second where we’re trying to seek out non-grocery based butchers, not to say there’s anything wrong with grocery stores. But, um, I really like to know butchers who take pride in knowing where those, those cuts come from. They’re, they’re sourcing the cattle, they’re picking them out.
There’s a lot of work that goes into that. And so I think when, you know, that tends to keep you more connected to the rancher. Um, so that’s typically where, where we buy from. There’s also a lot of online meat purveyors that are fantastic and ethically source their food. Um, so there’s a lot of online opportunities.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, good point. Great. Well, this has been so fun before we end. I want to give you guys a chance to let people know where they can connect with you online. And to also talk a little bit about the, uh, wine marketplace that you guys are just kind of starting up. Cause we haven’t touched on that a little bit.
Mary Cressler: Sure. So you can find us at Vindulge on all of the social platforms, even Tik Tok we’re dabbling in now, but at Vindulge. Um, and the wine marketplace. So we, in the fall, we launched a wine retail shop, an online wine retail shop and wine club. And that kind of came about because we’re getting people asking us all the time for wine recommendations are. Here I am at this store.
What wine should I get? And it’s really hard because all wine shops are going to be stocked with different wines. And a lot of the wines we like to talk about on Vindulge tend to be wines from really like small boutique winemakers, specialty wine makers, like wines you’re not going to see at your average grocery store in the Midwest or the East coast.
And so we wanted to, a way to allow folks to get the wines that we want when they want them. And so we launched the Vindulge Wine Marketplace. And we feature wines from right now, mostly the Pacific Northwest, some California, we’re opening up to Europe. We’re going to have some Italian wines coming in shortly, but they’re all wines with a very sustainably focused, many are biodynamic or organic farmed, lots of female winemakers are owners.
And so we’re really trying to showcase, showcase the kind of wines that we love and want to share with the world. And so we ship direct, um, to about 44 different states. And what am I forgetting?
Sean Martin: Yeah. We also have a club. So we started with one club. It’s a, it’s a, it’s kind of a Vindulge curated club. Over time we have plans for clubs that are specific to people’s palletes. So if you don’t like white wine choices, we’ll offer you a red wine option. But right now we have a quarterly and a monthly club option where we curate the wines and you get those. Uh, almost like a subscription service, and then we offer 10% off any of your retail orders and shipping discounts.
So it’s, it’s really fun and we’re going to be hosting live tasting sessions, educational components. And again, just kind of hanging out with us on the deck while we cook and drink wine, and everybody can kind of learn a thing or two. And we can articulate that story on behalf of these producers that we love partnering with.
Taryn Solie: Great. I love it now is that its own website or can you get to that through Vindulge, or where do people go for that?
Mary Cressler: Yeah, so the main website is Vindulge dot com and the wine shop is Vindulge Wine dot com. And if you’re on Vindulge, there are links to take you to the Vindulge wine shop and vice versa.
Taryn Solie: Perfect. Great. Well, this has been such a fun conversation. I want to thank you both, Mary and Sean, for coming on the podcast today.
Mary Cressler: Thank you so much for having us. This is awesome.
Sean Martin: Thank you for having us.
Taryn Solie: Wasn’t that such a great interview? I loved talking to Mary and Sean – we could have gone on and on with recipes for that smoked chicken. There were so many great meal ideas we discussed and I’m going to link to several of them on the show notes page, so you can find them there. To get to the show notes page you can either go to my main recipe website, Hot Pan Kitchen dot com and click on Podcast in the main menu. Or you can click on the link for this episode provided in whatever podcast player you’re listening in.
And, as I mentioned in the beginning, Mary and Sean have very generously given a discount code for the Vindulge Wine Marketplace! You can get 10% off your first order by using the code GRILLING10 at checkout. That’s G-R-I-L-L-I-N-G-1-0. And the marketplace is at Vindulge Wine dot com.
Thanks again to Mary and Sean, and thank you for listening. Until next time, keep grilling like a mother.
Frederic Altidor
This blog makes me hungry; What is your number one tip for bbq? Regards
Taryn Solie
Hi! The number one tip for BBQ I have is to get a good thermometer and know what internal temperature you need to cook your meat to. If you know that, it’s pretty hard to mess it up. Thanks for asking!
Love to bbq
Hi Frederic, so many different tips. Probably my top three tips would be:
1. When you’re putting the food on the grill, make sure that you don’t overcrowd it. This will make it harder to get evenly cooked food.
2. Once the food is on the grill, resist the urge to keep flipping it. Let it cook for a few minutes before flipping so that you don’t end up with dry, overcooked meat.
3. If you’re using a charcoal grill, be careful not to let the coals get too hot. You can always add more if they start to cool down too much.
Enjoy your bbq