I’m not really a macaroni salad person. Its probably the goopy mayonnaise that coats most macaroni salads, the limp vegetables, the inability to taste anything except a not-that-appealing sauce. Nevertheless, when I saw this recipe on the Kitchn, I knew I had to try it. To me, barbecue sauce is pretty much the ultimate condiment. I could put barbecue sauce on almost anything that wasn’t a dessert. Lucky for me, not too long after I found this recipe, I was invited to a pot-luck, end-of-summer pool party. Perfect.

The recipe starts out by brining chicken thighs for a couple of hours. I went with the lesser amount of chicken because I split off part of the recipe to make a vegetarian option, but if I was making the full recipe I would definitely go for the full 1.5 pounds. I unfortunately didn’t snag a picture of the setup before the chicken went into the broiler, but the chicken gets basted and basically broiler grilled by putting it on a wire rack.

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up the veggies for the salad. The red onions get soaked for 15 minutes to cut out some of their pungency since they’re raw in the salad.

The sauce is a mix of barbecue sauce and mayo, with a little bit of vinegar. I ended up going for only a 1/4 cup of mayo and more than a 1/2 cup of barbecue sauce, but you can adjust to taste.

Here’s all the chopped veggies mixed in with the cooked macaroni. This was the first recipe I cooked after my previous roommate moved out and took 90% of the pans in the house with her, so I had to cook the macaroni in a large saute pan. An interesting experience.

Once the chicken is cooked, it gets chopped up into small pieces. You can see I pretty heavily basted the chicken with barbecue sauce because you can never have too much barbecue sauce.

The chicken is added to the macaroni and the veggies.

The sauce is poured and mixed in thoroughly to coat everything. This makes a great macaroni salad; the barbecue gives it that different taste that you don’t usually get with macaroni salad, and the chicken gives it a little more heft and makes it a heartier side dish or even a meal. I think the chicken, with it’s cooked-on barbecue sauce, really makes it and adds that other dimension to the dish, but even the vegetarian version was tasty (and, to me, preferable to a standard macaroni salad). This was a great dish for a summer potluck.

Barbecue Chicken Macaroni Salad (from the Kitchn)

Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 1 quart warm water
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 – 1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (3-4 individual breasts)
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

For the macaroni salad:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (about 2 cups)
• 1 red or green pepper, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced and soaked in cool water for 15 minutes
• 3-4 stalks celery, diced
• 1 tomato, seeded and chopped small
• barbecue chicken, cooked and diced as described above
• 2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
• Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Combine the water, salt, and sugar in a shallow baking dish, stirring gently until the salt and the sugar are completely dissolved. Add the chicken to the brine. It should be completely covered by the brine. Add more warm water if necessary. Brine the chicken for 1/2 – 2 hours.
2. When you’re ready to cook, turn on the oven broiler and position an oven rack about 5 inches below the broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and set a wire rack on top.
3. Remove the chicken from the brine and discard the brining liquid. Pat the chicken dry and coat each side with some of the barbecue sauce. Arrange the chicken on the rack over the baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Flip the breasts, baste them with a little more barbecue sauce, and cook for another 5-7 minutes, until they’re completely cooked through.
4. Let the chicken breasts cool and then dice them into bite-sized chunks.
5. Cook the macaroni in a large amount of salted, boiling water until it is cooked a little beyond al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
6. In a large bowl, combine the cooked macaroni, all the vegetables, and the chicken. In a small bowl, combine the cider vinegar, 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, and 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce. Stir this into the salad mix. Taste, season with salt and plenty of black pepper, and add more mayonnaise or barbecue sauce as desired.
7. This salad will keep unrefrigerated for 4 hours, or up to a week refrigerated.

Last weekend we almost found ourselves grilling in the rain again, but at the last minute the sun came out and the grilling gods smiled upon us. It was a good thing, too, because it allowed us to make this amazing Adobo Chicken recipe from the NY Times. The chicken is basically cooked twice which imparts a full, rich flavor throughout the meat and keeps it moist and delicious throughout.

The chicken is poached first in a mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar and a few spices: garlic, bay leaves, black pepper and a diced chipotle pepper. The recipe called for a dried chipotle, but not being able to find one I substituted a couple of small canned chipotles in—what else—adobo sauce. I figured it would be an acceptable addition.

You want to poach the thighs in a pot where they can fit in one layer, but the liquid doesn’t have to cover them. Just flip them throughout the cooking so that they are cooked evenly on both sides. The recipe called 1 whole cut up 3–4 pound chicken or 2 pounds of bone-in thighs; I’m not sure how that math really adds up, but I do know (now) that 2 pounds of thighs doesn’t really yield 4 servings. Oh well.

The poached chicken is brown and cooked through. It’ll go on the grill to get a nice caramelized and somewhat crisp exterior.

After the chicken is removed the remaining liquid should be cooked down to about a cup. It won’t be thick like gravy, but it will be a very tasty sauce that is spooned over the grilled chicken and onto the rice or mashed potatoes used as a side.

Once grilled, the chicken becomes a darker, more rich shade of brown. It has all the benefits of being grilled (slightly charred exterior, flavor from the charcoal), as well as the benefits of being braised for a while (exceedingly tender and juicy). The grilling also helps to seal up the juices inside.

Like I mentioned before, this only supplied us with one dinner, not two like we usually shoot for. We did, however, have a ton of sauce left over. A few days later, I diluted what was left with a cup of water and braised some more chicken legs in it until the meat was pretty much falling off the bone. This I shredded and used for filling for tacos, and along with some freshly made salsa that incorporated some of the leftover chipotle peppers, made for another fantastic meal.

Adobo Chicken (from the NY Times)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup white or rice vinegar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 dried chipotle pepper or two small canned chipotles in a little of their sauce, chopped up
• 1 whole (3- to 4-pound) chicken, cut up (with legs separated from thighs); or use 2 pounds bone-in thighs or leg/ thigh pieces cut in two.

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a covered pot large enough to hold the chicken in one layer. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce the heat to medium-low or low (you want a slow simmer, nothing more). Cook, covered, about 30 minutes, turning once or twice, until chicken is cooked through. (You may prepare the recipe in advance up to this point; refrigerate the chicken, in the liquid, for up to a day before proceeding.)
2. When you are ready to grill the chicken, start a charcoal or wood fire or preheat a gas grill or broiler. The fire need not be too hot, but place the rack just 3 or 4 inches from the heat source.
3. Remove chicken, and dry it gently with paper or cloth towels. Boil liquid over high heat until it is reduced to about 1 cup; discard bay leaves and chipotle; keep sauce warm.
4. Grill or broil chicken until brown and crisp, 5 minutes per side. Serve chicken with sauce and white rice or potatoes.

Grilled pizza is one of those things that seems intimidating or even impossible, but it’s something I’ve wanted to try, especially with my newfound love of grilling. After seeing the posts on grilled pizza over on The Food in My Beard, it rose to the top of my list, and It turns out to be truly a simple and easy process, and very fun… I’ll definitely be making it again!

Usually when I make pizza I use pre-made dough from Trader Joe’s, which is quite good quality. I didn’t get a chance to stop by to pick one up, though, so I decided to try my hand at making some pizza dough, namely Alton Brown’s from his book I’m Just Here for More Food. It definitely added time to the whole process, but I think it was worth it. It was an amazingly delicious crust!

There’s not much to this recipe, ingredients wise. The dry ingredients are mixed with some water, which results in a pretty dry dough that needs some kneading to really come together.

Here it is after about 2 minutes, and everything has really come together into a nice dough ball. It’s clearly not well worked since it’s still really shaggy, but it’s got to rest a bit first.

After resting and some more kneading, it’s much more well developed. Even though it still looks shaggy here, that’s mainly because the dough is so thick that the dough hooks cut right through it.

After kneading by hand for only a few moments, the dough is smooth and ready for a rise.

The dough doesn’t rise very vigorously, but that’s good enough. It will spend the night in the refrigerator to let the flavors develop.

About an hour before you’re ready to put your pizza on the grill (or in the oven), the dough should come out of the fridge to bench proof, or basically come to room temperature and rise a little bit more (though it won’t rise a lot).

Here’s a picture of the chicken thighs I braised in some store-bought barbecue sauce (also the sauce for the pizza). I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the whole tray of toppings, but everything had to be chopped up and ready to go because once the pizza goes on the grill, it’s a quick process. For this pizza we used the shredded barbecue chicken, cheddar and asiago cheeses, corn, green peppers and red onions.

The grill needs to be set up with one side hot, and one side cool. The dough gets stretched out with olive oil (not flour) and placed on the hot side of the grill. Cover it and let it cook for 2–3 minutes.

The the pizza gets flipped over to the cool side of the grill. You can see the char in the middle of the dough… it’s a good thing!

Now the pizza is on the cool side of the grill, not directly over the coals. You can actually see part of the topping tray, including the cheese and corn, in this picture.

Then (quickly!) the toppings go on.

Here’s the pizza with all the toppings piled up on top. It benefited from pushing down the toppings a bit and out toward the sides so that not much dough is exposed. The cover of the grill goes on, and the pizza cooks for 10 to 15 minutes more (only 15 minutes if your grill is really cool, I would guess… 10 minutes was fine for us).

After about 5 minutes, I was concerned that the side closer to the coals was charring quickly and would get overly cooked, so I rotated the pizza 180º at that point so that it would cook evenly on both sides.

This pizza was great; the crust was really thick (I used the entire Alton Brown dough recipe, which makes 4 one to two person pizzas), but well cooked and it held up well to all the toppings. The char made it crunchy on the outside but bready in the middle, which to me is the best of both worlds. Like I said, I’ll definitely be making this one again!

Below is the recipe for Alton Brown’s pizza dough. Go crazy with the toppings!

Pizza Dough (from Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for More Food)

Ingredients

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 1/4 cups water, warm

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add water and mix for 2 minutes with an electric mixer, or until the dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, adding more flour by the tablespoon as needed.
2. Allow the dough to rest for 15 minutes, then knead for 5 minutes or until the dough is well developed.
3. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead by hand for about 30 seconds, then work the dough into a ball. Place the ball in a large bowl with a little olive oil and toss the ball around to coat. Cover the bowl and set aside for one hour or until nearly doubled.
4. Fold down the dough and pat into a disk, then place it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
5. An hour before you want the pizza to go on the grill (or in the oven), remove the dough and fold it down on itself, then leave it on the counter, covered, to bench proof.
6. Prepare the dough by stretching and pulling, making sure to let it rest for a few minutes every so often to let the gluten relax and make the stretching easier. For the grill, work it with olive oil and stretch it into a rectangle as long as will fit on your grill.

Sometimes you want to roast a whole chicken, but many times you do not. I’ll be honest that I hadn’t thought of treating bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts like you would a whole roast chicken, but it makes sense. This recipe, from The Kitchn, does just that with goat cheese, lemon and garlic, plus the added bonus of stuffing the chicken breast full of the goat cheese mixture.

It’s a simple enough recipe, starting out with creating a mixture of goat cheese, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic and fresh parsley. The original recipe calls for fresh, green garlic, which I saw but did not pick up on my outing to the farmstands last weekend, so I substituted a couple of cloves of regular garlic.

Mix the stuffing up well. I t was good enough to eat straight up on a cracker, but it’s going on to better things.

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A small amount of the goat cheese mixture gets rubbed beneath the skin of the chicken breast, and a larger amount gets stuffed into a 3-inch slit cut into the meatiest side of the chicken breast. As you can see, I managed to get got goat cheese mixture all over the chicken, which is fine. Then they get rubbed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and into the oven they go!

And that’s it. After about 30 minutes the skin becomes brown and crispy, and the goat cheese is melty and delicious. We served ours with mashed potatoes and a salad. Not only did the skin on the chicken breasts help keep them moist, the stuffing within them contributed to making them some of the moistest and most flavorful chicken breasts I’ve ever made.

Goat Cheese Stuffed Roast Chicken Breasts (courtesy of The Kitchn)

Ingredients

• 4 ounces goat cheese
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 teaspoon chopped parsley
• 2 cloves of regular garlic
• 4 medium bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF
2. In a small bowl, mix goat cheese, lemon zest, juice, parsley and garlic until well blended.
3. Loosen the skin on the chicken breasts but leave it attached at the edges. Cut a deep, 3-inch long slit in the meatier side of the chicken breast.
4. Divide the goat cheese mixture into four portions. Stuff each chicken breast full of one portion of the mixture, spreading some between the skin and the chicken.
5. Rub the chicken breasts with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place on a lined baking sheet and roast for about 30 minutes, or until the skin is brown.