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.

Of all the things I’ve been grilling lately, I hadn’t gotten around to something like straight up hamburgers, which are really kind of the essential grilled food. Don’t get me wrong, I love hamburgers, particularly of the homemade variety. I guess I’ve been making somewhat more ambitious foods lately, so the simple hamburger was not really high on my list. When I did decide that I was in a hamburger mood, it had to be something different, and I was struck with the inspiration of using a recipe from The Taste of Africa for kofta meatballs, but obviously forming them into burgers instead of meatballs. I had made the kofta before and they were phenomenal, so I deduced the hamburgers would be awesome too. This mix of spices makes such a delicious and unique burger, I’m sure I’ll be making it often.

Everything in one large bowl. It’s not surprising that I like this mix so much because it includes some of my favorite spices. All the veggies get chopped up extra fine so that they blend in with the meat well. I like to press the extra moisture out of the onions, too, so that the patties don’t get too wet and fall apart. With the yogurt there’s plenty of moisture anyway.

You have to get in there and really mix everything up with your hands. It’s fun, in a getting-dirty kind of way. I got four medium-sized burgers out of this recipe. When they cooked up they were kind of small in diameter, but thick enough that they were plenty filling.

I stuck these in the fridge until the grill was ready. Cooking them from cold also has the benefit of helping them stick together. I didn’t really have any problems with these falling apart, so I must have done something right.

On the grill. I think I cooked these about 5–7 minutes on each side over medium-high heat, but I don’t really remember. They were well done, but definitely still plenty juicy.

Dressed with lettuce, tomato and onion, with a mild provolone cheese. I also added some ketchup, but I didn’t want anything with too strong of a flavor, since I wanted to spices of the meat to shine through. I wasn’t sure how strong the spices would be, or how the mix would turn out in hamburger form, but they were fantastic. The spices shone through really well and made for extremely tasty burgers.

Kofta Burgers (adapted from The Taste of Africa by Rosamund Grant and Josephine Bacon)

Ingredients

• 1 pound of ground beef
• 3 tablespoons finely minced onion
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon plain yogurt
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 fresh green chili, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• salt and ground black pepper

Directions

1. Put the beef into a large bowl, add all the remaining ingredients and mix well with your hands.
2. Roll into four large balls and flatten into patties 1/2–3/4″ thick. Refrigerate, separated by wax paper or plastic wrap, until the grill is ready.
3. Grill over medium heat, 5–7 minutes on each side, or until the burgers are done to your liking.
4. Serve on a bun with all the hamburger dressings you like.

The same weekend I grilled the pizza I came across this recipe for Grilled Asiago Rounds on King Arthur’s baking blog. While they were suggested for eating with a dip of some kind, I immediately thought that they could be split horizontally for sandwiches and figured I might as well go all out on the dough grilling and try these the same day as the pizza. This required some creative planning to make sure everything went on the grill in order (I wanted to cook the pizza last so that it would stay hot for dinner), but everything worked out perfectly and these rounds cooked up perfectly, and made for fantastic sandwiches.

Instead of all-purpose flour, I substituted the 12-grain flour blend for the overnight starter. This only made up a small part of the flour, so it wasn’t super noticeable in the finished product, but it probably lent a little more heft.

The recipe called for semolina to make up part of the flours that went in at this point, but despite searching I could not locate it in either of my two main grocery stores. Of course, several days later I found it in one, and I probably could have found it at Trader Joe’s, but I just substituted all-purpose instead and it worked fine. I’ll probably make these again, though, and I might try the semolina to see if it makes a big difference in the finished product. Also you can see the shredded asiago cheese that is mixed in at this point. I also completely forgot the parsley that would also be mixed in at this point. Oh well.

Mixed together by hand it made a sticky but cohesive dough that easily pulled away from the sides of the bowl.

After kneading the dough was as smooth as dough containing shredded cheese could be, but it was actually stickier than before. The bakers on the King Arthur blog suggested reducing the liquid a bit if I was substituting all-purpose flour for semolina, and I did to a small extent, but it was rather unscientific and the dough might have been stickier than it should have been. I ended up adding flour through the floured surface it had to be poured onto, and in the end it turned out fine.

I let the dough rise in its bowl, mainly because my dough rising bucket was currently occupied by the pizza dough.

My rounds, all divided. The recipe says you would get 16 four-inch rounds about 1/4″ thick; when I started dividing them I knew that was just not happening, at least not for my purposes. I got about 8 rounds that were probably 4 to 4.5 inches in diameter and somewhere between 1/2 and 1/4 inches thick. At this point they can be refrigerated until you are ready to grill them, but luckily my grill was ready and so was I.

In order to get them off my table and onto the grill I needed to oil up a tray and my hands with olive oil and basically cover these guys in a thin layer. This was also necessary when I put them on the grill to prevent them from sticking. I also cleaned and seasoned my grill with a half and onion, stuck on a fork and dipped in olive oil, before I put these on there. They got put over medium high heat (in between the high heat mounded coals and the low heat area) for 2–4 minutes, depending on how fast it looked like they were cooking. I tried to keep the cover on the grill as much as possible to cook them thoroughly. When they got flipped they moved over to the cool side to cook for another 4 minutes. I didn’t cover them with a metal pan to help them cook through – I tried, but there was no covering them all with a pan or covering them and putting the cover on the grill too – but if you keep the cover on your grill, I think it serves the same purpose. In any case, it worked!

They smelled amazing, and it was all we could do to keep ourselves from eating them right after they came off. I think their cool-down time probably helped them cook through a little more too, though. They were perfectly cooked and the cheese just kind of disappeared into the dough, imparting flavor but without any noticeable pieces. The grilled flavor was subtle but present, and the rounds held up great split in half as sandwiches. It was fun to grill the bread (and fast!) instead of baking it, and it was something I will no doubt do again.

Grilled Asiago Rounds (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

Starter

• 3/4 cup 12-grain flour, or all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 teaspoon instant yeast

Dough

• All of the starter
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup all-purposed flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups freshly grated asiago cheese
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley, or 1/4 cup chopped fresh

Directions

1. For the starter, in a small bowl, combine the flour, water, and yeast. Cover and let sit at room temperature for at least 8 hours, or overnight.
2. In the bowl of your mixer combine the starter, water, all-purpose flour, yeast, and olive oil, stirring until the mixture is smooth.
3. Add the bread flour, salt, cheese, and parsley, and mix until a soft dough forms. Knead the dough with a mixer for 6 to 8 minutes until it’s smooth and springy.
4. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with greased plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, 45 minutes.
5. After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and let the dough rest for 10 minutes while you make sure the grill is hot and clean. You can refrigerate the dough, covered, for up to 3 hours at this point, if you need to adjust your timing or want to prep things ahead of time. Set up your grill so that one section is hot and another is low heat, with a medium-hot section between them.
6. Flatten the balls of dough to 4.5″ rounds about 1/4″ thick. Spray or brush the rounds lightly with some olive oil, and place a few of them on a medium-hot section of the grill. Cover the grill and cook for 2–4 minutes, flip the dough over and move to a low-heat portion of the grill. Cover the grill again and cook another 4 minutes, then remove from the grill and let cool somewhat. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.

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.

It’s been really, really rainy here the last month, which can put a damper on summer barbecue plans. On a day that was supposed to be sunny, we planned to go all out and turn our kettle charcoal grill into a smoker and barbecue some ribs. That afternoon it decided to start raining, but it wasn’t raining too hard, we have a covered area in our back yard, and we would be cooking over low heat anyway. It wasn’t as pleasant as originally planned, but the ribs still turned out well.

To me, barbecuing absolutely not the same as grilling; you can’t just grill a slab of baby back ribs, you have to barbeque them, which means setting them up to smoke for several hours over low heat. We only recently got a grill, and I had never done anything like this before. I diligently followed the instructions for how to turn your kettle grill into a smoker given on Simply Recipes, which made it look easy enough to set up that I figured, why not?

Along with the ribs, I put together a batch of cole slaw and some corn bread. I’ll put the corn bread in a separate post, but the slaw will stay in this one. Both the slaw and the ribs started the night before; the ribs set to brine in a mix of 4 cups water, 1/4 cup salt and 1/2 cup brown sugar. The slaw was actually put together entirely the night before to give it time to cure, so to speak.

I don’t have a full sized food processor, so I cheated on the carrots and bought pre-shredded. I wanted to cheat on the cabbage too, but I couldn’t find any pre-shredded cabbage at the store, so I just sliced it top to bottom in thin sections, and it fell apart as if it had been shredded anyway.

You’re actually supposed to mix the dressing in a bowl before adding it to the vegetables, but I guess I wasn’t really paying attention. In any case, if you mix it up well at this point, it should be fine anyway (and it was).

After spending overnight in the fridge, voila, cole slaw. It’s a ridiculously easy dish to make, but it is better to give it overnight, or at least several hours to set. This gives time for some of the moisture to come out of the cabbage and incorporate with the dressing, as well as for the dressing to marinate the vegetables as well.

The next day the ribs come out of their brine and get a rub applied. I used the Spice House’s Old World Central Street Seasoning, which is a tasty mix for all kinds of meat. The rub should be applied at least an hour before putting them on the grill; with the length of time it took to get the grill started, mine ended up sitting for about 2 hours. This also gives the meat time to come up to room temperature, which is best.

The grill is set up like so: a disposable, aluminum pan half full of water is place on one side of the grill so that the ribs will be sitting over it. This is for catching drips, and for helping to keep the ribs moist. On the other side the coals are heaped. Here you can see the chimney starter on the side where the coals will go. A chimney starter is best for this kind of thing because it more evenly lights the coals. We used lump charcoal (not briquettes), which is better for smoking.

I don’t have a picture from of the wood chips, but we used hickory wood chips we picked up at Home Depot and soaked for about 2 hours. They got scattered on the hot coals to provide smoke, and it really worked! After the charcoal is dumped out of the chimney and the first handful of wood chips are put on, the grill grate goes on and so does the meat, over the side with the pan (not directly over the coals!). Put the lid on such that the vent is on the meat side so that the smoke gets directed over the meat. Close down all the openings to cool down the fire, and keep a close eye on the temperature. I used a candy thermometer stuck through the openings in the vent; it should read between 250-300ºF.

Every hour I checked the meat, turned it, basted it with a mix of apple juice and bourbon, and threw some more coals and wood chips on the fire. Fortunately both our lump coal and our wood chips contained small enough pieces to slip through the grate, which made everything much easier. I ended up cooking our meat for about 3 hours, but next time I would go for five or six probably. The meat was pretty tender, but it could be even better. About a half an hour to 45 minutes before the ribs were going to get taken off the grill I started basting them with barbecue sauce (store bought) as well. You don’t want to add that too early so that the sugar inside it doesn’t scorch.

The ribs came out great, just like real barbecue. They were very smoky and pretty tender, though like I said before I could have smoked them for even longer to make them more tender. All in all a very rewarding experience, and one I’ll try again.

Homemade ribs, cole slaw and corn bread… a great meal.

The ribs don’t have a recipe, but below is the recipe I used for the cole slaw, an adaptation of Bobby Flay’s Creamy Cole Slaw.

Cole Slaw (adapted from Bobby Flay)

Ingredients

• 1/2 head of white cabbage, sliced into ribbons
• 2 large carrots, shredded
• 3/4 cup of mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 1/8 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons celery salt
• Salt and ground black pepper

Directions

1. Combine the shredded cabbage and carrots in a large bowl.
2. Whisk together the mayonnaise, sour cream, parsley, sugar, vinegar, celery salt, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl, and then add to the cabbage mixture.
3. Mix well to combine and taste for seasoning. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.

A few weeks ago we bought a couple of steaks from a butcher that stocks some unusual and exotic meats. We decided on two New York Strip cuts, one of bison and one of elk. This past weekend we finally got a grill to cook them on.

I rubbed each steak with a different spice mix that I picked up at the Spice House in Chicago the last time I was there. The bison got the Old World Central Street Seasoning, and the elk got the Hyde Park Seasoning.

To go along with the steak, we grilled corn cobs in their husks and roasted a mix of red potatoes and radishes…

I tossed them with some olive oil, basil, oregano, paprika and salt and pepper, and roasted them at 350ºF for 45 minutes.

A successful first grill of the season. The meat was juicy, flavorful and tender. The elk and the bison were distinct, but in a way that is not really describable. They were both very tasty, though.