Category Archives: Poultry

Warm Up Wings & Tenders

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The Super Bowl is coming up, and you know what that means – wings! I have a new sweet and spicy recipe that I want to try on game day, but I wanted to test it out first with a smaller audience. Of course, my dear wife had to whip out her Weight Watcher’s smart phone app and inform me that wings were 3 points a piece.

Ouch.

But tenders are only a point per ounce, so we made some compromises.

1 1/2 pounds chicken wings (about 6 wings)
1 pound chicken breast tenders
1 – 2 tablespoons of your favorite barbecue rub (Dizzy Pig Jamaican Firewalk, in this case)
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 cup honey
1/2 cup butter
1 cup Frank’s Original hot sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

I set the Big Green Egg up for an indirect cook at 400°F, using the inverted plate setter to diffuse the heat.

While the grill was heating up, I seasoned the wings and tenders with Jamaican Firewalk and a little fresh ground sea salt. Then I made the sauce by combining the pepper, honey, butter, Frank’s, Worcestershire, and garlic in a small saucepan over medium heat.

Knowing that the tenders would cook a lot faster than the wings, I arranged the wings in the middle of the grate and put the tenders around them. I closed the lid and let everything cook for ten minutes. Then I flipped the tenders and let them go for another 5 minutes.

At this point they were pretty much done, so I sauced both sides and let them go another 5 minutes. Then sauced them again, pulled them off the grill, and moved them to an oven set on Warm.

I flipped the wings and let them go 20 minutes. They were looking nice and crispy brown, so I sauced them on both sides, let them cook for another 10 minutes. Then sauced them again and moved them inside.

The Verdict: ★★★★½
For my first try, I am very happy with this sauce. The honey adds just enough sweetness to offset the heat and the vinegary tang. While the Frank’s gave off a nice warm background heat, the real spice came from the Firewalk. The end result was just hot enough to make me reach for an adult beverage, but not so hot as to haunt me later.

I really like the Firewalk rub, but lacking that you could add some cayenne to the sauce to boost the heat. Next time I might add a touch of brown sugar and vinegar to bump the sweet/tangy ratio up a bit.

The Nutrition: While they’re not fried, the wings are still 3 Weight Watcher’s points a piece. The tenders are 1 point per ounce. So 2 wings, 2 tenders, some veggies, and add another point for the sauce and the meal is still only 9 points. The sauce is 1 point per tablespoon, but using it instead of bleu cheese dressing for dipping saved some points too.

ONE YEAR AGO - Ze Boeuf

TWO YEARS AGO - Football Food – Chili & Wings

 

Chicken & Avocado Salad

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When everything is so cold and dark, sometimes you crave something fresh and green. When I saw the recipe for Chicken Salad with Avocado Dressing over at Noble Pig, I knew I had to try it out as a cure for my winter blahs.

The original version is for chicken salad sandwiches, but I thought it’d make a great dinner salad.

1 pound left-over chicken breast meat, sliced into strips
1 avocado
3 Tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon ranch dressing mix (Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch in this case)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 scallion (white and green parts)
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon dried mint
1 teaspoon dried cilantro
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 to 1/2 cup water
2 heads romaine lettuce, roughly chopped
1/2 cup roasted red peppers, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

In a food processor or blender, combine the avacado, mayo, dressing mix, buttermilk, scallion, parsely, garlic, mint, cilantro, and lemon juice and pulse to combine. Add 1/4 cup of the water and pulse again, adding more water if needed until the mixture is smooth and pourable. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Arrange lettuce on a plate. Top with peppers, chicken, avocado dressing, and some grated Parmesan.

The Verdict: ★★★★☆ This was so good that I plan on always making extra chicken so we have it around for this dish. The dressing had a tangy, buttery, fresh taste that went great with the smoky chicken and peppers.

Next time I would do this as a chop salad – finely chop together the lettuce, peppers, chicken, and maybe add some bacon and cucumber too. Then toss it with just a bit of the dressing and serve with more dressing on the side. I’d probably also switch out lime juice for the lemon to give it just a bit more zip bang.

The Nutrition: Makes 4, 275-calorie servings. The veggies are free so it’s only 7 Weight Watcher’s points if you leave off the cheese.

ONE YEAR AGO - DANGEROUSLY Cold Oatmeal

TWO YEARS AGO - Making More Bacon

 

Roast Chicken with Winter Veggies

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This is a heartier version of the Chicken & Veggies dish that I make a lot in the summer. I started trying these monster roasting chickens from Perdue about a month ago, and am sold on them as a great way to make a lot of meals with very little effort. These 7 – 9 pound birds make a big dinner for the 2 of us, a couple of lunches for me, and still leaves me with 2 pounds of white meat for salads or soups.

The Bird
1 7-9 pound roasting chicken (grill once, eat twice)
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried lavender
1 teaspoon dried tarragon or parsley
4 cloves garlic
Juice of 1 lemon (about 4 tablespoons)
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Make the herb rub (kind of a gremolata if you want to get fancy) by putting the garlic and salt in a food processor and pulse until the garlic is minced. Add the thyme, rosemary, lavender, tarragon, lemon juice, oil, salt, and pepper and give them a whirl until they are well-combined. Add more oil as needed to make a thin paste.

Clean and rinse the chicken, then pat dry. You can roast the bird whole, but I like to spatchcock (butterfly) the chicken for this dish so that it cooks more evenly and covers the veggies better.

To spatchcock the bird, set it in front of you, breast side down. Cut up through the backbone with either a pair of kitchen shears or a sharp chef’s knife. Spread the bird open like a book and locate the keel bone that sits between the breasts. Nick it with a knife to get it to open up, but don’t cut all the way through. Flip the bird over and press down on the center of the bird until it lies flat.

Rub both sides of the bird with the herb rub, working it under the skin a bit. Set the bird skin side up on a pan (I use a large jellyroll pan) and put it in the fridge, uncovered, for at least an hour. This not only lets the rub do its thing, but also helps dry out the skin a bit so it stays crispy.

Set your grill up for an indirect cook at medium-high (350°F) heat. While the grill is getting up to temp, put the veggies together.

The Veggies
1 medium rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch lengths
1 medium head cauliflower, cut into florets
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 fresh ground back pepper

Toss the veggies together in a flame-proof roasting pan (I use the bottom of a tagine, but an old 9×13 pan cake pan is good too). Drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat.

The Cook
Set the pan full of veggies on the grill. Place the grill grate on top of the pan and lay the chicken, skin side down, on the grate above the veggies. This way all the chickeny goodness will drip into the veggies as they cook and the steam from the veggies will help keep the chicken moist.

Close the lid and cook the chicken and veggies for 30 minutes. Remove the chicken and check to see if the veggies are done. If not, give them a stir and return the chicken, skin side up this time.

After another 30 minutes, start checking to see if everything is done. The chicken is done when the juices run clear and the the temperature has reached 160°F in the breast and 180°F in the thigh. Pull the veggies early if they finish before the chicken. This was an 8-pound bird, so it took it another hour on the grill to finish after I removed the veggies.

Remove the bird from the grill and let rest for 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the veggies from the pan to a serving bowl. Quarter the bird for serving.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
Another great roast chicken – juicy and tender with some great flavor from the smoke and the rub. Letting the skin dry out a bit kept it crisp nice and crisp. The cauliflower was just about to fall apart and the carrots and rutabaga were wonderfully sweet and tender.

The Nutrition: Use a slotted spoon to drain the olive oil and chickeny goodness off the veggies and you’ve got 4 big servings of free veggies with about 2 points worth of oil per serving. The chicken is 1 Weight Watcher’s Point per ounce of skinless white meat and 2 points per ounce for skinless dark meat. We actually found this to recipe to be a little light on fat overall because the chicken was so lean.

ONE YEAR AGO – SIBERIAN RIBS

TWO YEARS AGO – WHAT’S THAT SMELL?

 

Peruvian Roast Chicken

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Remember Sunday dinners? Everybody gathered around the table over a big ol’ hunk of meat with mashed potatoes, gravy, and pie for dessert. A meal so good it often required a nap and almost made it worth having to get up and go to church first.

While today it’s just the two of us (and we don’t get pie for lunch anymore), I still like the idea of making a big meal on Sunday and then having the leftovers for lunches or weeknight meals. So, when my dear wife found this MONSTER roaster chicken on sale, we knew that it would make the perfect Sunday dinner.

1 (6-8 pound) roaster chicken
1/3 cup soy sauce
Juice of 1 lime (about 1/4 cup)
6 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (or better yet, Achiote oil)

Rinse the chicken inside and out. Remove the giblets and any excess fat, then pat dry with paper towels. Put the chicken into a large zip-top bag.

Toss the garlic in a food processor and pulse until finely minced. Add the soy sauce, lime juice, cumin, paprika, pepper, and oil and give it a whirl to combine. Pour the marinade over the chicken, turning to coat. Squeeze the air out of the bag, seal it, and stash in the fridge while you get the grill ready.

Set your grill up for an indirect cook at 400°F. On the Big Green Egg, I use about half a fire box full of lump charcoal, an inverted plate setter to diffuse the heat, and put a trivet on the plate setter for the roasting pan.

Remove the chicken from the marinade and put breast side up on a rack set in a shallow roasting pan (an old 9×13 cake pan works fine).  Pour the remaining marinade over the chicken and then add about a cup of water to the pan.

Put the roaster full of bird (it’s so big it looks like a turkey, doesn’t it?) on the trivet. Close the lid and let the bird roast for 40 minutes.

Flip the bird breast side down and cook for another 20 minutes. Then flip breast side up and start checking for doneness by measuring in the temperature of the thickest part of the thigh. While the chicken is done at 160°F, I like to let it go until the thighs are at least 180 to 200°F, depending on how crispy the skin is getting. On a bird this big, I don’t really worry about the breast drying out too much.

This beast of a bird took 90 minutes to cook. I removed it from the heat and let it rest for 15 minutes before carving. I served it with some Crack Sauce, black beans, and sauteed peppers for a south-of-the-border feel.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
This was a truly wonderful roast chicken – juicy, tender, just a little smoky, and very flavorful. What makes it Peruvian? Heck if I know. The crack sauce is impressive and makes this dish unique, but the chicken itself was just straight-up good. Without the sauce it just tasted like great roast chicken with no real hint of cuisine or country of origin.

I haven’t done a lot of big roasters like this one, but really like the way they cook up. There is way more meat on one of these versus a regular chicken and the large amount of breast meat means that it takes longer to cook, so I get fall-apart dark meat and juicy white meat.

The Nutrition: Leave off the sauce and it’s just chicken – 1 Weight Watcher’s Point per ounce of skinless white meat and 2 points per ounce for skinless dark meat.

A Little Turkey Dinner

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I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! We traveled to see family, so I had one of those rare meals where I got to be a guest. All I had to do was bring a side dish and carve the bird. It was a very relaxing trip. When we got back, my dear wife wanted just a little Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us, so I decided to try a boneless turkey breast.

1 (3-pound) boneless turkey breast (buy a prepared one, or ask your butcher to debone and net a fresh one)
1-2 tablespoons of your favorite barbecue rub (Tasty Licks Ribit Rub in this case)

I set the Big Green egg up for an indirect cook at 300°F using an inverted plate setter to diffuse the heat. While the grill was coming up to temp, I dusted the breast heavily on all sides with the barbecue rub.

When the grill was ready, I added a chunk of pecan wood for smoke, and when the smoke turned from white to blue, I loaded the breast on the grate.

I cooked the breast, turning every 30 minutes, until the internal temp hit 155°F – about 1 1/2 hours total. I moved it off to a cutting board and let it rest for 15 minutes before removing the netting and slicing.

I served the turkey up with some sautéed green beans  and the polenta dressing left over from our big family meal.

The Verdict: ★★★★½
Very tasty – the turkey picked up a lot of the flavor from the smoke and the rub and was nice and juicy. I’m thinking about doing up a couple more of these and then running them through the meat slicer for sandwiches. To keep the costs down, I’m probably going to have to learn to bone and net my own bird. This video shows how to do it with a leg of lamb, but same idea.

The Nutrition:
If we’re just talking about the green beans and the turkey, life is good – 3 ounces of skin-on turkey breast is only 2 Weight Watchers points and the green beans are (mostly) free. Dare not, however, try to figure out the points for the dressing. I did and it made the poor little points calculator cry. Definitely a dish for special occasions.

Shrimp & Chicken Fajitas

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I had really hoped to make this dish on the Big Green Egg using a cast iron griddle, but the weather just wouldn’t cooperate. I ended up cooking it on the griddle (highly recommended) on the stove top (not so highly recommended).

It looks like there are a lot of moving pieces here, but if you are organized you can put this on the table in about an hour and a half.

The Chicken
4 boneless/skinless chicken thighs, sliced into 1/4 inch strips
Juice of 1 lime (about 1/4 cup)
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon Ancho chili powder
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon Cholula Chipotle Hot Sauce

Put the garlic cloves and salt in a food processor and pulse until the garlic is minced. Add the lime juice, pepper, cumin, chili powder, soy sauce, olive oil, and hot sauce and give everything a whirl until it is well-combined.

Pour half of the marinade over the chicken, toss to coat, and stash in the fridge for at least an hour, but not longer than 4 hours. Reserve the other half of the marinade in the fridge for later.

The Shrimp
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon achiote oil
1 tablespoon Cholula Chipotle Hot Sauce

Pour the  oil and hot sauce over the shrimp and toss to coat. Stash in the fridge while you prep the veggies.

The Veggies
3 large bell peppers (assorted colors are pretty) cut into strips
1 medium onion, chopped
3 gloves garlic, crushed and chopped
3 scallions, roughly chopped

The veggies will pick up plenty of flavor from the griddle, so I didn’t season them at all.

The Cook
Think of the griddle as a flat wok – you want to get it hot and move the food on and off it quickly. So have all of your ingredients, and a large (pre-warmed if possible) serving platter arranged in front of you before you start.

Center the griddle over your largest/hottest burner on the stove (or across 2 burners if you have a large rectangular griddle) and heat over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes.

Swirl a couple of glugs of peanut oil on the griddle and let heat until it starts to shimmer (about 2 minutes). Use a slotted spoon to remove the chicken from the marinade and arrange it on the griddle.

Let the chicken sear for about 2 minutes and then flip it over and let it cook for another minute or so until done (I like using a set of tongs for this).

Remove the chicken to the platter and put the veggies on the griddle. Cook these until they soften and start to char a bit, about 5 minutes (or until your smoke alarm goes off like ours did). Pour just a couple of tablespoons of water on the griddle to de-glaze it and steam the veggies a bit. Use a spatula here to scrape up the brown bits and work them into the veggies.

Remove the veggies to the platter and add the shrimp to the griddle. Cook these just until they turn pink and start to curl (about a minute), flip and cook the other side for another minute.

Remove the shrimp to the platter and drizzle the whole thing with the reserved marinade. Serve with warm tortillas and guacamole.

Nutrition
Lean meat and tons of veggies, what’s not to love? Just watch how many glugs of oil you use and go light on the tortillas and guac. Makes 6 (1 1/2 cup) servings. 270 calories. 6 Weight Watchers points.

The Verdict: ★★★★½
An outstanding weeknight dish. The griddle gave everything a nice char and the Cholula Chipotle Hot Sauce added a little heat with a lot of slightly sweet smokiness. Th achiote oil was subtle, but it added a richness that helped round out all the flavors.

While the griddle did its smoky/searing job, it was a little too much for the vent fan in the kitchen. Between the smoke and the splatter, this would have worked at lot better outside on the grill.

One Fire – Many Meals

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No recipes this time, just some thoughts on making the most of what’s left of our fleeting daylight and fall grilling weather.

I got inspired to rethink how I plan meals on the Big Green Egg after reading the Kingsford U: Grill Once Eat Twice post over at Nibble Me This. Chris makes the point that it takes the same amount of time and fuel to to cook two chickens as it does to cook one chicken, and you end up with more tasty grilled chicken for future meals.

Even though I’m usually just cooking for the two of us, I put this idea into practice by typically doubling or tripling most recipes on the grill. The extras end up in my lunch, or as dinner later in the week, or they get frozen off  for those nights when nobody wants to cook.

Now I’ve started working on a variation of this that I call one fire – many meals. The idea is that once you’ve gone to the effort to get the grill set up, you might as well try and pass as much food over that flame as you can.

For instance – the other night I made steak for dinner. While I was getting the BGE fired up, my dear wife said that there were also a couple of packages of chicken tenders in the fridge that she would like cooked up for salads and snacks. She had planned on baking them, but they would be ever so much better grilled, wouldn’t they?

Fire = good so, of course, they would taste better. My only question was how to go about cooking the steaks hot and fast and then modifying the heat so that the tenders would get a little char on them, but not get overcooked and dried out.

I pondered this while I prepped the steak with some fresh-ground sea salt and black pepper. I had the tenders laid out in a 9×13 pan and was hitting them with a little Dizzy Pig Swamp Venom when an idea clicked – I could leave the heat alone after the steak was done and resting and then cook the tenders quickly over the roaring flame and move then off to a baste á la  Adam Perry Lang, cut the heat, and let them finish there.

Not bad, but wouldn’t the heat move too fast through a metal pan and just scorch the tenders?  Probably. Hmmm, how about a Dutch oven? Yeah that’d work. Or, even better, use the tagine. Genius!

I poured a couple of glugs of olive oil into the base of the tagine and then added about 4 cloves of crushed garlic and about a teaspoon each lemon zest, thyme, and sage.

With the BGE running at about 650°F, I put the steak on for 2 minutes a side and then moved it off to a warm plate, covered it with another plate, and let it rest while I cooked the chicken.

The tenders went on in batches. With the heat this high, by the time I finished putting the last row of tenders on the grate the first row was ready to be flipped. Once they had some nice grill marks on each side (but where still pretty raw on the inside) I moved them off the heat to the tagine, making sure to toss them a bit in the oil.

When all the tenders were in the tagine, I swirled another glug of olive oil over the top, put the lid on, and moved the tagine to the grill.  I closed the lid on the BGE, shut the bottom vent down to reduce the heat, and went inside for a lovely steak dinner.

When I checked on them 30 minutes later, the tenders were done and basting in their own juices. I moved everything inside, removed the lid, and let them cool before packaging.

Cooking this way does take a bit more time and fuel, but not much more effort. You’re essentially letting your downtime and residual heat work for you. For this cook I spent maybe an extra ten minutes packaging off the tenders, but we ended up with a steak dinner, a dinner of tenders and veggies the next night, chicken salad lunches for a couple of days, and about a dozen tenders frozen off for chicken stew the next week.

Not bad for a little extra work.