Chicken with Beer BBQ Sauce

This recipe comes from the Cooking With Beer recipe booklet my parents gave Nate a while ago. The recipe -- Pork Chops With Lager-Infused BBQ Sauce -- obviously calls for pork chops, but we had some boneless, skinless chicken thighs we used instead.

The recipe calls for a marinade and then a BBQ sauce to have on the side. Everything was tasty, and I'd definitely make it again. We (well, really, Nate ...) added a little too much beer to the sauce, it was a little more liquidy than it probably should have been. So stick to the measurements!

The recipe also calls for you to grill the chicken, which we did, but you could bake it in the oven just as easily.

For the chicken marinade:

• 1 cup lager (we used Lakefront Riverwest Stein) 
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 3 Tbs. molasses
• 1 teas. chili powder
• 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• 3/4 teas. salt
• 1/4 teas. black pepper

Combine all ingredients besides salt and pepper in a resealable storage bag. Refrigerate 2 hours, turning occasionally.

Prepare grill for direct cooking. Remove chicken from marinade and discard marinade. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Grill over medium-high heat about 7 minutes per side or until cooked through. Serve with BBQ sauce.

For the BBQ sauce:

• 1/2 cup lager
• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 3 Tbs. maple syrup
• 2 Tbs. finely chopped onion
• 1 Tbs. molasses
• 1 Tbs. cider vinegar
• 1/2 teas. chili powder

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer 10-12 minutes or until slightly thickened, stirring occasionally.

Grilled Quesadillas

I've been CRAVING quesadillas, so I decided to put them on last week's menu. We thought we'd try something new and a little different, but something that made complete sense--cook them on the grill, rather than in a skillet. It turned out to be a great idea!

While the way we usually make quesadillas is very good, it was fun to try something different. We also used smaller tortillas (I know I once mentioned I'd never buy tortillas again, but I caved and picked up a package of fantastic La Tortilla Factory white corn tortillas at Outpost. When I don't make my own, these are definitely the ones I would buy), a little less cheese and didn't pile tons of ingredients on them.

I'd try to tell you exactly what we used and what we did, but we really kind of made it up as we went. But here is a general idea of how to make grilled quesadillas:

• Package of 8 tortillas


• 1 chicken breast


• A couple small sweet peppers, chopped


• About 1/4 of a red onion, chopped


• Jalapeno(s) to your taste, chopped


• Mixture of spices: garlic powder, garlic salt, pepper, salt, coriander, cumin, chili powder, etc.


• Shredded cheese

Preheat grill on medium-high heat. Turn to medium-low when ready too cook.

Meanwhile, cook chicken in a skillet on the stove top with peppers and onion until chicken is done and vegetables are tender.

Using a cookie sheet or tray, place four tortillas on the tray. Sprinkle cheese on each tortilla, and top with chicken mixture. Top with more cheese and the other tortilla. This way you'll have the quesadillas ready to place on the grill.

Place on the grill and cook until cheese melts and tortillas are brown and a bit crispy.

Do your best to flip them over and cook until tortilla looks the same.

That's it! It went A LOT quicker doing it this way, and they tasted just as good, if not better. We served ours with some spiced-up black beans and guacamole and chips. Yum!

Chipotle Beer-Can Chicken

We've always wanted to make beer-can chicken, but for some reason never have ... until now. We were going to just pick an ol' can of beer and create a spice rub, but then, coincidentally, my mom gave Nate a small cookbook, Cooking With Beer (a PIL Cookbook), she picked up while checking out groceries. And what do you know, the book contains not one but TWO beer-can chicken recipes.

We decided to go with the Chipotle Spice Rubbed Beer-Can Chicken one because we had everything in-house already. The recipe was super easy, and Nate seemed to have an easy enough time getting the chicken situated on the grill.

• 2 Tbs. packed light brown sugar


• 2 teas. smoked paprika


• 2 teas. ground cumin


• 1 teas. salt


• 1 teas. garlic powder


• 1 teas. chili powder


• 1/2 teas. ground chipotle powder


• 1 whole chicken (3.5-4 lbs.)


• 1 can beer (12 oz.)


• (not part of the actual recipe: 1/4 of an onion)

Prepare grill for indirect grilling. Grease grid.

Combine all spices and sugar in a small bowl. Gently loosen skin of chicken over breast, legs and thighs. Rub mixture under and over skin and inside cavity. Discard (or drink!) one fourth of beer or reserve for another use. Hold chicken upright with cavity pointing down; insert beer into cavity. Put onion in neck to seal in juices.

Place chicken on prepared grid, standing upright on can. Spread legs slightly for support. Cover and cook 1.25 hours or until chicken is tender and cooked through.

Lift chicken off beer can using metal tongs. Let rest on cutting board 5 minutes, standing up. Carefully remove beer can and discard. Slice chicken.

The chicken was soooo juicy, it was delicious. The spice rub was great, too, and you could really do anything you want with it.

We served the chicken with a side salad and some pan-fried potatoes. It was a great Fourth of July meal!

Proscuitto Pizza

Last Friday, Nate and I were craving pizza, so we picked up some fresh dough and toppings at Outpost. Since it was a decent night, we thought we'd throw it on the grill, our favorite way to make pizza.

For toppings, we had sliced tomatoes, chopped red onion, slices of fresh mozarella and slices of proscuitto. We used some basic marinara sauce as our pizza sauce.

The pizza was really, really good--the proscuitto added some great flavor, and who doesn't love fresh moz? The only thing I would do differently next time is use a lighter, maybe olive oil sauce, rather than a red sauce.

Pizza on the Grill--Again

(I apologize for being M.I.A. for the last week. It feels weird not having blogged at all! But there hasn't been too much to blog about. We haven't been cooking a lot, due to Nate's brother being in town over the weekend and being busy on weeknights.)

We haven't made it for quite some time (too busy grilling other stuff I guess), but as I've mentioned before, making pizza on the grill is one of my new-ish favorite things.

I had some girlfriends over Tuesday night (the group I do ethnic dining with). We decided to mix up our monthly outings by having a cookout at my house.

I made two grilled pizzas for us. I made some last year, and they were a hit, so I wanted to make them again.

The first one I made was a BBQ chicken pizza. I used Saz's BBQ sauce (my favorite!) for the base. I had previously cooked one chicken breast (chopped) on the stove top, just mixed with some BBQ sauce, garlic powder, a bit of chili powder, salt and pepper. I spread the chicken on the pizza as well as sauteed yellow onion and cheddar cheese.

For the other pizza, a vegetarian one, I used an olive-feta cheese spread from Outpost as the sauce, and I put green and red pepper on top as well as some crumbled feta.

For how to make pizza on the grill, check out this blog post. There are step-by-step instructions on the post.

In addition to the pizza, everyone brought a delicious component to the night's meal.

Leah brought little cucumber sandwiches, which were pieces of bread with a cream cheese and herb spread, topped with a cucumber and some dill.

Lisa brought a super delicious (I think we were all a little surprised!) "massaged" kale salad, with apples, sunflower seeds, onions, currants and more. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture.

Here is the recipe.

For dessert, Sun made fabulous oatmeal creme pie cookie sandwiches (a take off on the Little Debbie cookie sandwiches). They're super rich, but, of course, super delicious! Here is the recipe.

As always, we had a great meal together!

Excellent Korean Beef with Rice Noodles

In my magazines and cookbooks, I finally started noting how we liked each recipe. My mom always did this, so I don't know why I didn't start it sooner.

The meal we made Thursday got an "excellent." It was fantastic--and easy, too. The recipe, Korean-style Beef Skewers with Rice Noodles--was another recipe from the May 2010 Cooking Light. For a quite a while, not too long ago, I really wasn't eating red meat (for no good reason, really). I still don't eat a ton of it, but the grass-fed, free range beef we've been buying from Outpost or farmers markets is just so good. It's so much more flavorful and lean than typical grocery store beef.

The recipe for the beef and noodles is above. The only thing we did differently was use Sriracha instead of chile paste. We cooked the beef a little longer than it probably should have been cooked (we had a bit of a grill snafu--the gas tank ran out on our big grill, so we had to use our small tailgate grill, which makes it a little harder to control the heat), but it was still really tasty and flavorful.



On the side, since we had some to use up, we made a spicy eggplant dish. Here's the recipe. Since we really only had about a half an eggplant--rather than the four Japanese eggplants the recipe calls for--I kind of quartered the recipe and made it up a bit as I went. I used all the ingredients the recipe calls for, other than oyster sauce (I used the fish sauce we have) and chili garlic sauce (again, I used Sriracha).


The eggplant was really tasty. It was definitely a new and different way of making eggplant.



All in all, it was a great meal, and we're still talking about it days later!

Sassy Shrimp and Summer Veggies

We got a ton of great vegetables in the last CSA box, and I knew I wanted to use them sooner than later. So we decided to do shrimp and veggie kabobs. Kabobs are kind of my go-to thing when I don't know what to do with veggies.

For the shrimp, we used this Sassy Seasoned Shrimp recipe, which a bunch of tweaks:
-Rather than 2 lbs. of shrimp, we just bought 3/4 lb. raw shrimp and halved just about the entire recipe (except for the juice--I forgot I was halving the recipe, and added all of the juice the recipe calls for).
-I didn't get fresh ginger, and just used about 1/2 teas. powedered ginger.
-Instead of green onions, I used up some of the yellow onion I had on hand.
-I couldn't find mango nectar (juice) at the local Pick 'n Save, so I bought papaya juice. It seemed to work just as well!
-For the chili-garlic sauce, I used Sriracha.
-We let everything set in the marinating bags for about 1.5 hours, rather than the recommended 2.


As for the veggies, I used zucchini, yellow squash and eggplant, all from the CSA. I used this simple Shrimp Kabob Recipe for the veggies. I followed the recipe exactly, figuring I probably had about 1 lb. of veggies. I marinated these for about 1.5 hours, too.



We put everything on wooden skewers we store in the freezer, and we grilled everything on low. First, we grilled the veggies, for about 20-25 minutes, and the shrimp for about 10-12 minutes.

In addition to the shrimp and veggies. we had some leftover black beans I had made earlier in the weekend. The black beans included red onions, red pepper, jalapeno, spices like cumin, coriander and garlic.



Everything was delicious and came together really well. I'd definitely make both marinades again.

A Lesson in Spiciness

Nate and I took it easy Friday night, and decided to hang out at home and make burgers for dinner. The newest issue of Cooking Light features some delicious-looking burgers on the front cover. We picked the spicy poblano burgers with pickled red onions and chipotle cream. (We didn't make the pickled red onions--I'm not a big fan of anything pickled (I've always hated pickles) and we didn't want to make a big batch if neither of us liked them).

Here is the recipe for the burgers and the sauce. We followed it pretty much as it's stated, other than a few (important to note) things:

-Instead of a slice of white bread, we just used about a 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs we had.

-Instead of the sour cream it calls for for the sauce, we used plain, fat-free Greek yogurt.

-Instead of just using the 1 chipotle pepper and 2 tsp. adobo sauce it calls for, I used 3 chipotle peppers and probably 4 tsp. of sauce. Needless to say--and even though Nate and I both like spicy foods--the sauce was hot. Too hot! I had to have two glasses of milk with dinner! Next time, I'll definitely follow the recipe and add more after the fact if it's not spicy enough. And I'll also not put as huge of a dollop on top my burger!

The burgers were absolutely delicious and perfectly juicy. It may have helped that we used good, grass-fed and lean ground beef we got at Outpost.

For sides, we made sweet potatoes fries (mixed with olive oil, seasoned with curry powder, paprika, cayenne, garlic salt and powder, salt and pepper, and baked for about 20 minutes at 375) and a side salad.

Yum!

Mexican on an Early Father's Day

My parents are going to be in Europe over the real Father's Day, so we had an early celebration this past Sunday. After a long motorcycle ride throughout southeastern Wisconsin, my parents came over (in case you haven't figured it out, or don't already know, I'm an only child) and we made them Mexican food, one of my family's favorites.

We started with homemade guacamole (the avocado was a little brown, so that's why the guac is so dark), as usual, as well as some Mrs. Renfro's salsa.

We wanted to do something a little different for the main meal, so I found a recipe for carne asada tacos. They were really good, and everyone seemed to like them. We followed the recipe exactly, except that we didn't layer the tortillas--but it probably would have been a good idea, since they torn apart pretty quickly and easily. I made the mojo sauce from scratch, but I saw a bottle of the marinade at El Rey's. I also made the pico de gallo the recipe calls for. We had that with chips to start, too. It's really, really good--and it makes a ton! I only used three of the four tomatoes it calls for, and that was more than enough.

We served the tacos with some of the leftover rice from the red curry cashew meal, spiced up with some frozen corn, chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper and hot sauce, as well as black beans flavored with the same spices.

To finish off the meal, we had some Mexican pineapple-flavored cookies as well as vanilla frozen yogurt with strawberries.

I'm pretty sure my dad was pleased with the meal, and on Father's Day, that's all that matters, right?

Mediterranean Stuffed Chicken Breasts

We found this recipe in the most recent issue of Cooking Light. The chicken turned out pretty good. The only thing I might do differently is add a little more pepper and salt to the outside of the chicken before it grills. Also, the recipe makes 8 servings. We wanted only two, so we pretty much guessed on the measurements for everything.

Here is the recipe for Mediterranean Stuffed Chicken Breasts. We served the chicken with sauteed spinach with some olive oil and garlic salt and whole wheat noodles with some Parmesan and a few shakes of red pepper flakes.

Portabellas in Place of Meat

My friend Leah has been taunting me (just kidding, my friend!) with her tales of grilled portabella mushrooms and veggies and serving them with goat cheese. I knew I had to try it for myself.

So tonight for dinner we made grilled portabella sandwiches. They were delicious and turned out just as I hoped they would. Here's what we did:

Grilled Portabellas with Veggies and Goat Cheese

2 portabella caps, stems removed

About 2 cups of sliced red, green and yellow bell peppers and red onion

Sun-dried tomato and basil goat cheese, about 2 oz. crumbled

2 hamburger buns

olive oil

pepper

salt

cooking spray

Brush olive oil over the portabellas and/or spray some cooking spray on them (we did this since we put them directly on the grill rack). Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides. Grill at low to medium heat for about 10 minutes or until desired doneness. Top with goat cheese and let the cheese melt a bit (it won't melt too much).

Meanwhile, in a skillet, saute peppers and onions coated with a bit of cooking spray for about 15 minutes over medium heat.

Toast buns for a few minutes in the oven. Top with portabella and veggie mixture. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar (we used our fancy pomegranate balsamic).

We served the sandwiches with homemade potato chips (made with potatoes from our CSA) and some leftover asparagus. This is how we made the potato chips. We've made the bleu cheese dipping sauce before. I liked it; Nate did not. We just had them plain this time, and that was fine with me!

Mother's Day Meal

For Mother's Day, we had my mom, dad and grandma over for dinner. We decided to make one of our favorites: grilled pizza.

But first we had a delicious Caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, basil leaves and tomatoes, all drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

For the pizza, we made two kinds. The first had BBQ sauce spread over the dough, then cooked chicken with spices and a bit of sauce, sauteed red onion, chopped cilantro and shredded sharp cheddar.

The other had a creamy garlic sauce, sauteed yellow and green peppers, mushrooms, artichokes and a bit of Parmesan cheese.

With the pizza, we toasted some roasted garlic bread we got at Outpost.

For dessert, I cheated a bit, and bought--rather than baked--an angel food cake with strawberries and organic vanilla ice cream. Angel food cake is one of my favorites!

Everyone really seemed to like everything. We were pretty pleased!

A Favorite Summer Meal: Shish Kabobs

I absolutely love shish kabobs on the grill when it gets warm. We make them quite often--they're easy and usually pretty healthy.

Today, for dinner, we mixed it up a bit. I had some Wildtree sate sauce I won at a Wildtree party a few months ago that I've been wanting to try. Here's what we did:

-Cut up two chicken breasts into 1-inch pieces, combine with sate sauce, put on kabob skewers.

-Cut up veggies (zucchini, green pepper, yellow pepper, red onion and mushrooms) and pour a marinade over (I made something up using olive, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, ginger powder and a bit of Sriracha). Skewer was well.

-Grill for about 20 minutes.

-For a side, I made plain couscous flavored with curry powder, spicy curry powder, garlic salt and garlic powder, and about 1 teas. olive oil.

We heated up some of the sate sauce to dip the chicken in, too. It's good stuff--a bit spicy and kind of salty for my taste, but still really good!

And tonight was the first time this year we ate at our patio table. I love this time of year!