Beer Marinated Chicken

By Somer

All I hear about when I talk about grilling chicken is Beer Can Chicken.  It’s all the rage right now.  I’ve always wanted to try it.  It looks absolutely delicious and juicy.  However, since I live in a rental with just a tiny slab of concrete for outdoor living space, I only have a tiny charcoal hibachi on which to do my outdoor cooking.  Obviously I cannot make Beer Can Chicken on this tiny grill so I came up with a slightly different alternative.  The outcome was a juicy, smokey, flavorful dish that almost brought my husband to tears (because it was so delicious.  He can be emotional over food).

Beer Marinated Butterfly Chicken

(My recipe)

3 bottles of beer (a darker beer like an ale would be best)

one bulb of garlic (that’s a whole head, folks!)

1 Tblsp. salt

1/2 Tblsp. black pepper

1 6-7 lb. whole chicken, butterflied

First of all, clean your chicken after you have taken it out of its packaging.  Check for any stray feathers and quills and give it a good rinsing under the faucet.  Pat it dry and get ready to do some cutting.  Butterflying a chicken is really easy, just make sure your knife is adequately sharp or else you’re going to cut your bloody finger off!

Just sit the chicken up on it’s little butt and turn it so that you are looking at it’s back.  You are going to need to cut the backbone out, so just feel with your fingers for where it is and start from the top and work your way down.  You’re mainly going to be cutting through little rib bones so it’s not terribly difficult, just be careful.

It comes out pretty clean.  Don’t throw away that backbone, though!  Save it for chicken stock!

The next thing you want to do is lay the chicken down flat so that the inside is facing you.  Feel for the bone right in the center of the breast and knick it with your knife near the top.  Then simply use your hands to split it (the bone) down the middle.

Once the bone has split, use your fingers to pull out the breast and rib bones so that the breasts are bone-free.  And now you have butterflied a chicken.  Congratulations!  Now wash everything with hot soapy water and make sure there is not a single drop of raw chicken juice anywhere!  Wash your hands and make sure you get under your fingernails as well (if you have any).  Gotta make sure you are very careful when working with raw poultry.

Now, mince all of the cloves from an entire bulb of garlic and place them in a large container.  Add the three bottles of beer and salt and pepper and mix well.  Add the chicken, skin side up, into the marinade and swish about to get things mixed.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

When you retrieve this for cooking the next day, I must warn you…..there is going to be a hell of a smell coming from that bowl.  That entire head of garlic along with that strong beer makes for a strong odor!  It’s not a bad odor, just really really strong.  Don’t worry, though.  Marinades are supposed to be strong.

Now, when it comes to charcoal grills, the best accessory is the charcoal chimney (that doo hickey on the left).  Simply fill the tall part with charcoal, stuff the bottom with newspaper or kindling and light it.  The kindling being on the bottom and burning will get the charcoal going without the aid of lighter fluid, which is good because if you use lighter fluid, the food can tend to taste..well, like lighter fluid.  Don’t dump the coals into your grill until they are mostly white (at this point they are HOT HOT HOT).  Once you have dumped the coals into the grill, run inside and prepare the chicken for grilling!

Now certainly you know that you should have had the chicken setting out to come close to room temperature for at least 15 minutes before you were going to grill it, right?  Ok, good.  Now pat the chicken dry with a paper towel, brush the skin lightly with some olive oil and sprinkle the skin with some paprika.  The paprika isn’t for flavoring, it adds a gorgeous color though.  Once this has been accomplished, lay your chicken on the grill skin down and cook for at least 8 minutes per side (depending on the heat of your grill).  Turn once and make sure to keep the lid closed during cooking.

When the chicken is done cooking, let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.  You won’t have to do much cutting.  If you didn’t overcook the chicken, it will be falling apart and juicy.

What we ended up with was an extremely juicy and tender chicken that was very savory due to the marinade but not really tasting too heavily of either the garlic or the beer.  It was delicious.  I hope you can try this and show it off to some friends.  Enjoy!

Potato Salad and a Picnic at Home

By Somer

Happy Memorial Day!  Today is the day that rings in the summer season and we all try to celebrate this day with camping, lake trips, or picnics.  My family is preparing for a cross-country move at the end of August, so our time (and money) is at a premium right now.  Since we took advantage of this long weekend by packing and purging, I decided to bring a little bit of festivity to my family by having a little backyard picnic.  We live in a townhome and our backyard basically consists of a slab of concrete (we don’t allow our son to play in the surrounding grass because of a-hole neighbors who don’t clean up after their dogs), but I still wanted to try to have a little bit of fun tonight.

We had steak grilled on our tiny charcoal hibachi, a traditional potato salad, and peach pie.  I’ll share the recipe for the peach pie tomorrow (and believe me, you WANT that recipe) but we’ll talk steak and potato salad tonight.

As a food enthusiast, I feel that it is my duty to explain a few things to you all about steak.  A good cut of steak (ribeye is my favorite, but it’s really a personal choice) needs only salt and pepper as a seasoning.  Don’t be seduced by those “grill seasonings” because they are mostly salt and all crap.  I notice that people who eat their steaks overcooked tend to want “seasonings” or steak sauce and it really is a shame because those things ruin a perfectly good piece of meat.  If a rare steak scares you, try a medium or medium rare steak.  The meat is very juicy and very tender.  Once you taste one that is cooked just right, you understand why a bunch of bells and whistles destroy what should be the dominating flavor.  If a little bit of pink in the middle of your steak grosses you out or scares you, you shouldn’t be eating steak at all.  Stick with chicken, you chicken.

The potato salad recipe I’m going to share with you is a very traditional and very old potato salad.  I see a lot of recipes for potato salads that have vinaigrettes and are light and healthy.  I would love to try a few of these recipes because they really do look delicious.  But when I want to have a picnic, I want REAL potato salad.  I want it cold and hearty and rich.  It’s just what I crave.  It’s not something that I indulge in more than a few times a year, but when I do make it, I make HUGE batches of it so I can munch on it for lunch during the week.  I’ll warn you, though:  if you have heart problems or high cholesterol you probably shouldn’t read on.  If you’re a flavor freak with a healthy ticker, please read on!

Traditional Potato Salad

(This is my recipe)

-6-8 cups potatoes cut into large cubes

-5 hard boiled eggs

-1 cup mayonnaise

-1 cup salad dressing (Miracle Whip)

-2 Tblsp. yellow mustard

-Green onions for garnish (optional)

I used Yukon Gold potatoes and I peeled them.  I have seen people use Russet potatoes and leave the skins on, and that is perfectly fine.  I happen to think that the Yukon Gold is potato perfection and I use it almost exculsively.

Cut your potatoes into fairly large cubes so that they don’t fall apart in the boiling process.  Put the cubes in a dry pot and add cold water to the pot.  This will ensure even cooking.  Also make sure that you salt the water really well because potatoes don’t take in salt after they are cooked and you want that flavoring.

Make your hard boiled eggs.  Surely you kow how to do that, right?  Eggs in pot, water in pot, boil.  You want these cooked all the way through..more so than how you would make them if you were to eat them straight up.  That yolk needs to be cooked to death!  10 minutes at a full boil should make sure that the eggs are properly cooked to death.  Ok, I’m stupid.  I’ll move on.

Peel the eggs and cut them in half.  With some gentle manipulation, the yolk should come out of the white part.  Put the yolk in a medium sized bowl and chop the whites roughly.

Put the mayo, salad dressing, and mustard in the bowl with the egg yolks and mash together so that it’s well combined.

Yes, this is a heart-stopping mixture but if you’ve had it before, you know how good it is.  And hey, this is how it’s made!  Try to not think about how bad it is for you….kind of like when you eat a big hamburger with a large side of fries.

When the potatoes are fork tender, drain well and gently toss with the dressing.  Toss in the egg whites.  The dish will be thick.  Chill in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours and garnish with the green onions.  This dish is very yellow, so a little green is needed if you like.

Instead of the usual close-up picture of the finished product, I decided to showcase the people who eat my cooking the most.  This will be changing hopefully since we are moving closer to family, but these two are always more than happy to be my taste testers.  Happy Memorial Day and enjoy!