Garlic and Soy Sauce Marinated Grilled Chicken

Garlic and Soy Sauce Marinated Grilled Chicken

Garlic and Soy Sauce Marinated Grilled Chicken

Wanted to grill something this past weekend. But we didn’t have much in the house and this is the season when all the yard work makes every weekend minute precious– no time in the schedule for a last-minute grocery store run. Let’s see what we have…hmmm, some boneless chicken breasts. OK, but how to season them…a spice rub? Nahh, done that many times. Maybe some kind of marinade, but what kind exactly? What to make, what to make… finally decided on a quasi-Asian style marinade. Only had a few hours to marinate it, but it turned out great! For a side dish I made some fried rice with ingredients I had on hand– that’s what’s in the background of the pic above. The rice turned out really good too– I’ll make a separate post on the fried rice next week.

Ingredients:

  • 4 Chicken Breasts, Boneless or better yet, Bone-in. Dark meat such as chicken thighs work really well for this recipe too.
  • 1/2 Cup Water
  • 1/2 Cup Peanut Oil
  • 1/4 Cup Mirin (Rice Vinegar)
  • 2-3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
  • 1 Teaspoon Fine-Ground Black Pepper
  • 1/2 Teaspoon Toasted Sesame Oil
  • 1 Whole Head of Garlic

 

Special Utensils:

  • Meat Thermometer
  • Garlic Press (optional)

 

Serves 4

Separate the cloves from the head of garlic and remove the skins. Dice up the garlic, or better yet, crush the cloves in a garlic press. Mix the garlic with the rest of the marinade ingredients. Marinate the chicken for at least several hours, preferably overnight.

As always, heat up enough charcoal to cover half the grill, and either burn some of your favorite hardwood down to coals or soak some wood chips for smoking. What I’ve been doing lately is lighting the charcoal in a chimney starter, then pouring out the coals onto the bottom of the grill when they’re good and ignited (but before they’re covered in gray ash, meaning they’re ready for cooking). I put some pieces of wood on the charcoal so it has a chance to catch fire, burn down to coals and be ready for cooking when the charcoal’s ready. the slightly quicker, easier method is to briefly soak wood chips, and throw the chips on the charcoal when it’s ready for cooking. I used apple wood, and it worked really well with this recipe.

Here’s a tip for cooking marinated meats when the coals and the smoking wood are ready– I tried this with the chicken, and it worked nicely. Usually you want to cook the meat on the hot side of the grill first to get a nice sear on the outside, then move to the cooler side of the grill to finish cooking. This works great if you used a dry rub, or you’re cooking some nice steaks seasoned only with a little salt and pepper. But if you take marinated meat directly from the marinade to the hot side of the grill it will drip on the coals and create a sooty smoke that may give the meat an off-taste. Also, it’ll be hard to get a good sear on the wet marinated meat right away. Works better to cook on the cooler side of the grill first– put down a drip pan or some foil to catch the excess marinade. Use the meat thermometer and when the chicken is close to temperature, move to the hot side of the grill to brown both sides of the chicken last. Cook to 165 degrees, let the chicken rest for a few minutes, serve and enjoy!

 

Ramen Noodle Soup

Ramen Noodle Soup

Ramen Noodle Soup

From those 5-for-a-dollar noodle packets that are a staple of broke college students everywhere, to high-end Japanese Noodle restaurants, ramen noodle soups really run the gamut in price and sophistication. I ate a lot of those cheap packaged ramen noodles in college, and I still get a hankering for a bowl of noodles every now and then. You can buy higher quality ramen noodles at Asian markets or the Asian section of well-equipped grocery stores. I’ve used those, and they’re good. But we keep the cheap packaged noodles around for emergencies, in case we want to throw together a quick and really tasty bowl of noodle soup.

First, throw out the little packet of powdered seasoning that comes with the noodles– it’s full of sodium, MSG, and God knows what else. We’re going to make a much more flavorful and healthy soup base for the ramen noodles.

Since this site is called “RecipeOptions.com”, I’ll give two options for ramen noodle soups here– a spicy Thai Tom Yum-style soup, and a non-spicy soy sauce-flavored soup. These are not strictly authentic recipes– just quick and delicious Asian style soups I put together using ingredients I’m likely to have on hand.

These recipes serve about two people (or one if you’re hungry). Double up on ingredients as needed.

Spicy Tom Yum Style Ramen

Ingredients:

  • 6-8 Raw Jumbo Shrimp, Deveined.
  • 1 Package Ramen Noodles
  • 2 Cups Low-Sodium Chicken Stock
  • Juice of 1 Lime
  • 2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
  • 1 Heaping Teaspoon Thai-Style Red Curry Paste
  • 3-4 Cloves Garlic, Diced
  • 1/2″ Square Piece of Diced Ginger
  • 1-2 Celery Sticks
  • 6 Green Onions
  • Peppers– Any Combo of Red/Green Bell, Thai, Jalapeno, Serrano, or Sweet Peppers– depending on what you have on hand and how hot you want your soup.
  • Handful of Mushrooms
  • Red Chili Pepper to taste– once again, depending on how spicy you like
  • 1 Teaspoon of Peanut Oil
  • Few Drops Toasted Sesame Oil
  • Fresh Cilantro (Optional)

 

Dice up garlic and ginger. Cut celery and peppers into thin strips. Dice up mushrooms and cut green onion into 1/4-1/2″ pieces. Juice the lime. Cut shrimp down center about halfway through to butterfly them so they cook quickly and evenly.

Heat up a soup pan, add the sesame oil (just a few drops for flavor) and the peanut oil. Add the garlic, ginger, peppers, mushrooms and celery and stir-fry them in the oil for just a few minutes– not too long. Add chicken stock, red curry paste, fish sauce, and chili pepper. When it starts to simmer, add ramen noodles and cook for about two minutes.

Add green onion, lime juice and cilantro (if you like cilantro– a lot of people don’t like the taste, but if you do it really adds a lot to the soup). Finally, add the shrimp, turn off the heat, cover and let the soup sit for about three minutes. This is the secret to NOT overcooking shrimp in soup– don’t boil it! Make sure the shrimp is completely submerged in the broth and let the residual heat cook the shrimp just right. Enjoy!

Ramen Noodles with Soy Sauce Flavored Broth

Ingredients:

  • 6-8 Raw Jumbo Shrimp, Deveined.
  • 1 Package Ramen Noodles
  • 2 Cups Low-Sodium Chicken Stock
  • 2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
  • 3-4 Cloves Garlic, Diced
  • 1/2″ Square Piece of Diced Ginger
  • 1-2 Celery Sticks
  • 6 Green Onions
  • 1/2 Sweet Red Bell Pepper
  • Handful of Mushrooms
  • Fine-Ground White or Black Pepper, to Taste
  • 1 Teaspoon of Peanut Oil
  • 1 Sheet Nori (Japanese Seaweed), cut or torn into strips

 

Dice up garlic and ginger. Cut celery and peppers into thin strips. Dice up mushrooms and cut green onion into 1/4-1/2″ pieces. Cut shrimp down center about halfway through to butterfly them so they cook quickly and evenly.

Heat up a soup pan and add the peanut oil. Add the garlic, ginger, red pepper, mushrooms and celery and stir-fry them in the oil for just a few minutes– not too long. Add chicken stock, soy sauce, and white or black pepper. When it starts to simmer, add ramen noodles and cook for about two minutes.

Add green onion and nori. Finally, add the shrimp, turn off the heat, cover and let the soup sit for about three minutes. This is the secret to NOT overcooking shrimp in soup– don’t boil it! Make sure the shrimp is completely submerged in the broth and let the residual heat cook the shrimp just right. Enjoy!

Perfectly Grilled Pork Tenderloin

pork-loinPork tenderloin is the equivalent of the beef tenderloin that filet mignon cuts come from. Used to be though, the Food and Drug Administration recommended cooking pork to an internal temperature of 165 degrees– which resulted in a relatively dried-out, flavorless cut of meat. But a couple years ago, the FDA changed their recommendation for cooking pork to an internal temp of 145 degrees. This is great news for us backyard barbequers, for now we can confidently cook pork tenderloin the way many chefs have been doing it for years. And what a difference 20 fewer degrees makes! I was amazed at the difference the first time I tried it. Pork tenderloin cooked medium, so it’s still slightly pink in the middle, is juicy and delicious. It almost rivals filet mignon in flavor, in my opinion, and at a lot less per pound.

Grilled pork tenderloin is good either as a dry rub or marinated. I decided to marinate it this time– maybe I’ll do a dry rub pork loin post later this summer– I’ll definitely be making this again.

Ingredients:

  • 1 Pork Tenderloin, any size
  • 1 12-oz. can of your favorite Cola
  • 1/2-Cup Olive Oil
  • 2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
  • 2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
  • 1 Teaspoon Black Pepper
  • 1 Teaspoon Granulated Garlic Powder
  • 1 Teaspoon Oregano

 

Special Utensils:

  • Meat Thermometer

 Serves 2-4, depending on size of tenderloin

Mix the marinade ingredients. Marinate the tenderloin for at least several hours, preferably overnight.

Heat up charcoal to cover half the grill, or heat up half the burners on your gas grill, if you insist on using a gas grill (crime against barbeque, in my opinion, but I try to keep an open mind). I also cut up some apple wood, burning some on the coals to embers, and reserve a few chunks to soak in water for smoking. I think I mentioned in another post, if you have a gas grill and you want to smoke meat, I’ve heard you can put wood chips in foil, wrapped up but open on the ends, then set directly on a burner to get the wood inside the foil smoking.

When the coals are ready. first put the pork on the hot side of the grill, turning every few minutes just until you get a nice brown on outside of the meat. Then move the meat to the cooler side of the grill to finish cooking with indirect heat. Insert the thermometer probe into the middle of the loin, sit down, open your favorite beverage, and wait until the temp reaches 145. take the tenderloin off the heat, let rest for 5 minutes or so, and enjoy!

Diced Potatoes on the Grill

potatoesAfter

Now that warm-weather grilling season is here in Michigan, I thought I’d focus a little more on BBQ/grilling side dishes. Here’s one my dad used to make when he grilled in the backyard. I’ve added to it but the principal of cooking the diced potatoes in foil is the same as when he did it back when I was a kid. It’s a great-tasting side that’ll go with anything you’re grilling or barbequing. Simple, and a nice change of pace over plain old whole potatoes wrapped in foil and grilled.

Ingredients:

  • 5 medium-sized potatoes, skin-on, washed and scrubbed
  • 1 medium sized onion
  • Sweet red, orange or yellow peppers (optional)
  • 2 teaspoons black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon thyme
  • 2-3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 2-3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
  • 1-2 tablespoons granulated garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon salt

 

Special Utensils:

  • Heavy-duty aluminum foil

 

Serves 2-4

Pull out a long piece of foil from the roll. I usually pull out a 3-foot long piece and fold it in half for extra strength. Dice up the potatoes into around one-inch squares. I leave the skins on, but you could peel the potatoes first if you like. Dice up the onion and peppers (if you’re using peppers) and add it all to the foil sheet. Then drizzle the olive oil and apple cider vinegar over and add the salt, pepper, garlic powder and thyme. Grab both ends of the foil sheet and kind of roll the potato mixture back and forth to help distribute the spices. oil. etc. This is what it should look like at this point:

potatoesBeforeNow take the top and bottom of the foil sheet and wrap it together carefully, rolling the top of the seam down to make a good semi-airtight seal. Do the same with the sides. Get the charcoal going or turn the gas burners up on one side. Now here’s the trick to making the potatoes really good– lay the foil package right on top of the heating-up coals, or put them where the gas flame is the hottest. Turn over at regular intervals. The idea is to brown the potatoes just enough to carmelize them and increase the flavors, to get that hash brown flavor– not enough heat and all you’ll get are steamed potatoes.

Get the potatoes sizzling away nicely on the high heat first, and when you start to grill you can back off on the heat to the potatoes. By the time your BBQ is ready you should be able to open a perfectly cooked pouch of potatoes. Enjoy!

Slow-Smoked BBQ Pulled Pork

pulledPork
We had family coming over for a birthday party for our kids, and I wanted to make something special. Though I’ve done a lot of barbequing, I’ve only tried pulled pork once or twice, and just winged it, figuring things out as I went along. Turned out pretty good, as I recall (how bad could slow-smoked pork turn out?). But this time I wanted to try something more authentic. I did a lot of research into different styles of rubs and sauces, which vary widely from region to region. I finally settled this time on a western-side of North Carolina style rub and sauce, with a few of my own variations.

North Carolina favors a vinegar-based barbeque sauce. The eastern variety has no tomato at all, it’s pretty much vinegar, sugar and pepper. The western side of the state likes a similar thin vinegar-based sauce too, but with some ketchup added. I used tomato paste instead of ketchup because I thought the sauce recipe already has plenty of vinegar and brown sugar, and ketchup is pretty much just tomatoes, vinegar and sugar– seemed redundant to me. Plus I wanted to get the sauce just thick enough to adhere to the pork without just running off.

My attempt at western North Carolina style pulled pork turned out really well, and everybody seemed to enjoy it.

Ingredients:

  • 1 5-8 lb. pork shoulder (also known as a Boston Butt)

 

(rub):

  • 2 teaspoons black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 teaspoon dry mustard
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
  • 1-2 tablespoons garlic powder
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons paprika

 

(sauce):

  • 2 1/2 cups apple cider
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste
  • 4 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1-2 tablespoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 2 tablespoons rub from above recipe
  • 2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
  • 1-2 tablespoons Tabasco or other hot sauce
  • 1-2 tablespoons Worchestershire Sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme

 

Special Utensils:

  • Smoker
  • Meat Thermometer
  • Grinder (if using whole spices)

 

First, mix the rub. I start with whole peppercorns, mustard seed and celery seed, so I use an old blade-style coffee grinder to grind up the spices along with the oregano and thyme (I like it powdery to help the flavors absorb into the meat). then I mix the spices from the grinder with the rest of the rub ingredients. But if you have pre-ground spices just mix them all up in a bowl.

Pat the rub all over the pork shoulder, preferably the night before, at least an hour before cooking. wrap up the rubbed shoulder and put it in the refrigerator until time to cook.

Be prepared for an all-day project. This can take as long as 12 hours, depending on how you cook it, so plan ahead and set the alarm to get started early enough for it to be ready in time. If you need to speed things up, I have a tip a little later on how you can do that.

When it’s BBQ time, fire up the coals and get the smoking wood ready. I won’t get too much into prepping the smoking wood because I covered it in the Smoked Barbequed Turkey post. I will say, since I wrote that post, I’ve read a lot about NOT soaking wood chunks for smoking, that it affects the quality of the smoke. But when I use dry chunks of wood I get fire flare-ups which cause temperature spikes. Another alternative is to make a separate fire with the smoking wood and use the embers for cooking. But when you need to slow-cook for 8 or more hours this approach isn’t too practical unless you have a lot of spare wood to use. What I do is get the wood chunks wet, but I don’t soak them for a long time. This keeps them from catching fire too quickly. Then I have  a spray bottle handy and I keep an eye out for temperature spikes– that means a wood chunk has caught on fire, and I give it a shot of water to put it out. This approach keeps the temp low and constant, and the smoke flavor turns out great.

Put the shoulder on the grill fat side up. Keep the smoker temp around 225-250 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a long slow cook, so no need to put the meat thermometer probe in for about 5 hours or so. At around the 5 hour mark, insert the probe in the center of the shoulder, away from any bone. After the probe is in, keep adding coals every 2 hours or so , and the occasional wood chunk, until the internal shoulder temperature reaches 190 degrees– that’s the magic number that will cause the collagen and connective tissue in the meat to dissolve and melt, causing the fall-apart shreddability you want for pulled pork.

When the temp reaches around 150 degrees though, you have a decision to make. This is about the point where the temperature levels off for a long time, and it seems to take forever to start rising again. If you have the time, you can wait it out and this will help create a nice brown “bark” on the outside of the shoulder. OR…you can wrap the shoulder in heavy-duty foil to help cook it in its own juices and hurry up the rise to 190 degrees. I had a deadline, so I opted for the foil.

While the shoulder cooks, mix together the sauce ingredients while heating up in a pan on the stove. I like to just heat things long enough to help the ingredients combine, about 20 minutes-1/2 hour. Don’t boil, just heat below a simmer while stirring. then let the sauce cool to room temp.

When the shoulder is at 190 degrees, take it off the heat and let it rest for a 1/2 hour if you can (unless you have hungry guests ready to eat, like I did). If you didn’t already wrap it in foil, wrapping it now would be a good idea. When you’re ready for pulling, take two large sturdy forks and shred the pork up. Mix up the shredded pork with a little of the sauce to keep it moist, and leave the rest of the sauce on the side for people to add more as they like. Have some type of buns to serve the pulled pork on, sloppy-joe style. Enjoy!

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