Grilled Ginger Ale Chicken

Ooh, this is good chicken!  I came up with the recipe on the fly based on ingredients I had on hand and was rather impressed with myself because it turned out so nicely.  The real key here is to a) not cook the chicken at too high a temperature so it cooks evenly and doesn't dry out, and b) use a really good, very gingery ginger ale.  I used Reed's Ginger Ale, it is very potent and delicious if you are fond of ginger.  Seagram's or Canada Dry will probably result in something tasty, but it also probably will not taste like ginger.  You are warned.
 
Grilled Ginger Ale Chicken
  
1 1/2 lbs chicken breasts (probably 3)

6 oz good quality ginger ale

4 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt

 

Clean chicken breasts and each cut in half horizontally to make thinner pieces.  You can cut bigger breasts into more than 2 pieces.  Consider how many people you are wanting to serve and adjust accordingly.

 

Place the chicken pieces a in doubled gallon Ziploc bag.  Add marinade ingredients, seal bag, and squish to coat.  Place bag in a bowl and refrigerate at least 4 hours.  

  

When you're ready to cook the chicken, preheat your grill to medium low (or whatever temperature you know from experience will cook the chicken slowly enough so it can be cooked through and have grill marks without entering the Earth's atmosphere), do whatever pre-grilling tasks are required for your specific grill, and oil the grate.  Grill the chicken for 10 minutes without disturbing it, flip it over, and grill 10 minutes on the other side, or until cooked through.

  

Serve immediately.

  

Yield: However many pieces of chicken you end up with, probably 6.

Grilled Corn & Tomato Salad

I have made this salad 4 times in the past month or so.  We love grilled corn on the cob, and so far every time I have grilled this summer, I've grilled corn for us to eat immediately as well as corn to use the next day in this salad.  It's nothing fancy, but very good!

 

Grilled Corn & Tomato Salad

 
2 cobs fresh corn

olive oil

salt and pepper

10 oz (by weight) cherry tomatoes, halved

3 Tbsp sliced green onions

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, plus more to taste

1 tsp dried basil

1/8 tsp garlic powder

salt to taste

Remove the corn husks and corn silk from cobs.  Rinse corn and pat dry.  Brush all over with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Grill on an outdoor grill over medium heat, rotating every couple of minutes and with grill cover shut in between, until there are grill marks all over the corn and it's cooked through, about 15 minutes.  Remove corn from grill and let it sit until cool enough to handle, or wrap it in foil and refrigerate over night.

When you're ready to make the salad, cut the corn off the cobs with a serrated knife.  Place in a medium mixing bowl with the halved tomatoes and green onions, then add the rest of the ingredients.  Toss until everything's well mixed, taste, and add a little more vinegar, salt, garlic powder, or basil if you think it's needed.

I always serve half of the salad immediately, then cover the rest and serve it the next day.  It's good both ways!

Grilled Honey Mustard Chicken

This recipe is a little exciting for us because it's the first one I cooked on our grill this year, and the first time I've used the grill since we bought our house late last summer!  It did not disappoint.  If you like honey mustard at all, you will enjoy this.  Neither my husband nor I are particularly crazy about honey mustard, and we really enjoyed it.  My husband said it was excellent and I liked it, too.  It's one I'll make again for sure and I'd like to try baking it.  The extra dipping sauce would also probably be really good on chicken nuggets.

I found this recipe on AllRecipes.  My only changes were to sprinkle some salt on the chicken, use Worcestershire sauce instead of steak sauce, and I made more of the sauce so we could have some for dipping.

Quick Note:  If your chicken breasts are very thick, you may want to cut them down the middle so they're thinner and will cook through without the outside getting too done.  I know my chicken in the picture is a little more done on the outside than is preferable, I've only grilled chicken a couple of times in the past and am still getting used to our rather lousy grill!

Grilled Honey Mustard Chicken

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts (see note above)
salt to taste
1/2 C dijon mustard
1/4 C plus 2 Tbsp honey (this is 6 Tbsp altogether)
1/2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp mayo
 
Lightly sprinkle both sides of chicken breasts with salt and place in a gallon sized zipper plastic bag.  Whisk together remaining ingredients until smooth.  Pour 1/2 C into a small bowl to use for basting later, and 1/3 C into another bowl to use as a dipping sauce when serving.  Pour the remaining sauce into the bag with the chicken, seal the bag, and squish the chicken around so it's evenly coated in the sauce.  Refrigerate the chicken until you're ready to cook it (about 8 hours is good) and periodically squish the chicken around in the bag to make sure it's all coated well.

When you're ready to cook, preheat the grill to medium and oil the grate.  Arrange chicken pieces on grill, let cook for a few minutes without touching them, then turn the chicken and grill on the other side for a few minutes.  After the chicken is opaque on the outside, you can begin to baste it periodically with the reserved basting sauce.  Continue to grill and turn chicken pieces until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of one of the pieces registers 165 degrees.  Remove chicken from the grill and let it rest for a couple of minutes, then serve with the reserved dipping sauce.

Yield: 6 servings

Simple Grilled Portobello Mushroom Burger

Prepare for more less than mediocre photos, my friends!  I recently found out about yet another cooking group that I really want to join.  It's called, you can read about it at that link.  They only let you join if your blog has 100 recipes with photos.  I have more than 100 recipes, but not all of them have photos.  Added 'em up and about 75 have photos.  That means everything I post for the next while will be accompanied by a photograph unless I absolutely cannot stand to post one.  I'll also go back and add photos to some posts that don't have one.  You may want to shield your eyes, don't let my pictures deter you from trying the recipes :)  Oh and of COURSE I will not just be posting random recipes to get a photo up.  My standards are always that I only post recipes that I love, turn out great, and are ready for you to successfully whip up in your own kitchen!

On to the recipe!  I actually have a backlog of recipes (AND photos) to post, but for some reason I prefer waiting a couple days between posts.  Don't want to bury my recipes too quickly, you know?  I will probably pick up the pace though as I have like 10 recipes waiting in the wings and the pile will only keep growing. 

I am still loving my new grill and today's recipe is for grilled portobello mushroom burgers.  You may look at the ingredients and not be very impressed, since the actual burger is just a big ol' mushroom, olive oil, salt, and pepper, then it's topped with a bit of garlic aioli.  But sometimes simpler is better, and this burger is for people who really love mushrooms.  I have tried other portobello burgers where the mushroom flavor was completely covered up with a marinade or glaze or something.  They were good, but we LIKE the flavor of mushrooms and do not feel it needs to be covered up.  Cooked this way, they still taste like mushrooms, and the garlic aioli accentuates the flavor instead of obliterates it.  Plus, if you're paying $6.99 a pound for these overgrown button mushrooms (really) like we are, where's the sense in making it taste like something else?  In any case, we really, really liked these burgers and will definitely make them again!  Next time I am thinking of adding a slice of swiss cheese and making the mother of all mushroom swiss burgers.

Simple Grilled Portobello Mushroom Burger

portobello mushrooms, 1 for each person
olive oil
salt
pepper
buns (make sure they are vegan if you're serving someone who is vegan)
garlic aioli (leave off if you want the burgers vegan!)
any other toppings you want, like lettuce, tomato, or grilled red onion slices (yum!)

Let your grill preheat.  While that happens, wash and thoroughly dry your mushrooms, then cut off the stems of all the mushrooms so the stems are flush with the rest of the cap.   Brush olive oil all over the mushrooms (I used oil on a paper towel), then sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  When grill is ready, stick the mushrooms on the grill, gill side up, and grill for 5 minutes over medium-high heat with the cover down.  You may want to check to make sure they aren't burning (though a little bit of black is tasty).  Before flipping them, one at a time pick the mushrooms up with tongs and pour out any accumulated oil and juices in the gills.  They will cause flare ups if you don't.  Cook the burgers on the other side for the same amount of time.  Flip again and cook a couple minutes on the first side, then flip once more.  By this time, the mushroom should feel soft when you poke it with your tongs.  Lower the heat and toss your buns, cut side down, on the grill and grill until toasted.  Drain the mushrooms briefly on paper towels, then serve on the buns with the garlic aioli and any vegetabley toppings you want.

Best Hamburgers Ever (aka Umami Hamburgers)

On Monday night we bought an inexpensive propane grill!  I've been wanting one for a while because I'm terrible at cooking anything other than veggies, steak, or hot dogs on our hand-me-down round charcoal grill.  My one attempt at grilling chicken resulted in what appeared to be charcoal briquettes.  Last night we had grilled barbecue chicken using Christie Jordan's barbecue sauce from her Southern Plate cook book.  They chicken turned out amazing and I would love to share the recipe for the sauce, but I feel kind of weird doing that since she specifically chose not to post it on her own blog.  The sauce was great but I want to make a few changes next time and will share my version then.  Tonight we decided to go with our favorite hamburger recipe and in the next week we're planning to do portobello mushroom burgers and grilled pizza, too.  Yum!  If anyone has a favorite grill recipe that they think I should try, I would love to hear about it!

Now, on to the recipe.  If you can believe it, I had never cooked a hamburger until about a year ago.  Once or twice I'd made turkey burgers, black bean burgers, and portobello mushroom burgers, but never hamburgers.  They just aren't my thing.  The only ones I ever really cared for are the ones my uncle makes, which are full of garlic.  But then I came across this recipe over at White on Rice Couple and was intrigued by the addition of fish sauce to the meat.  Diane and Todd promised it made the meat extra savory and I just had to try it!  The burgers ended up being out of this world delicious and I've made them several times now over the past months.  I still don't like hamburgers from other places, but we both think these ones are incredible.  This is my tweaked version of the original recipe (with lots of garlic, like my uncle's hamburgers!) and how we love them best.  If you've never tried fish sauce before (or have a bottle languishing in your fridge already), this is a great recipe to use it in!

Sorry there's no picture, I meant to take one but we were hungry!  They just look like your standard hamburger though.  The flavor is what makes them special.

Best Hamburgers Ever

1 lb ground beef (I've used lean and fattier beef with great success)
1 T fish sauce
1 t garlic powder
1/2 t pepper
1/4 t salt

Gently mix together ingredients, being careful not to handle it too much or the burgers will be tough.  Form into 4 patties.  Make them thinner and wider than you want the finished burgers to be because they will shrink when cooked.  Poke a hole in the center with your fingertip so the burger will cook evenly.  To cook the burgers on a stove, heat about 2 T oil in a large nonstick skillet (believe me on the nonstick!) over medium-high heat and cook on one side until browned, then flip and cook on the other side until the burgers reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can add a bit of water to the skillet if the bottoms of the burgers start cooking too much.

If you want to cook the burgers on a grill, just grease the grate and cook the burgers on one side until browned, then flip and cook on the other side, being sure to cook them to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you want cheeseburgers, when the burgers are done you can top each one with cheese and close the lid on the grill for about a minute or until the cheese melts.  Serve the burgers on toasted buns with whatever toppings you'd like.  A bit of mayonnaise and sliced avocado is especially good!

Yield: 4 hamburgers