Kicked-Up Chicken Tacos

 How often do you ever wonder, that million-dollar question," What's for dinner, tonight?"  Well, tonight was no different. We went to the supermarket, with a blank slate, and tried to decide, what would be easy and affordable to make?  After browsing through the circular, we noticed that our local Harris Teeter supermarket had boneless and skinless chicken thighs, on sale for a $1. 49, a pound. Once we had the chicken picked out, we started to quickly think, what can we make with it? Near the meat section, the supermarket conveniently placed the Grill Mates marinades, within eye view.  The buy one get one free sign, over the display, pretty much made this a no-brainer.

 We prepared the marinade, according to the specifications on the back of the envelope, we also added a touch of honey, to sweeten up the marinade.  Once the mixture was thoroughly mixed, we placed the 2 pounds of chicken thighs, in a Ziploc bag and allowed the poultry to marinade, for approximately one hour.

 The kettle was fired up, cleaned and sprayed with nonstick cooking spray, to prevent the chicken sticking to the grill.  When spraying the grill with nonstick cooking spray, I strongly advise to use the Weber brand, because it is specially made to NOT cause flareups.  When the coals were ready, the chicken was laid out on the grill, for about 5 min. on each side, and then turned, for a another 5 min.  After that, the chicken was placed directly over the coals, for about a minute to 2 min., on each side, to brown up the chicken.

 Once the chicken was done, it was removed from the grill and foiled, to allow the chicken to rest. We like to take a chicken off the grill, at approximately 165° internal temperature.  The chicken will continue to cook in what is known as "carry over cooking".  The "carry over cooking" will take it well beyond the safe temperature of 170° internal.  It helps to have a instant read thermometer, to test for proper cooking temperature.

 Here is the part, where the chicken gets kicked up a bit, instead of using the traditional salsa, to season up chicken, we decided to use Philadelphia cooking cream cheese, a Santa Fe blend.  After the chicken was thinly sliced,  we incorporated the cream cheese and blended it thoroughly, tasting and seasoning as we went along. Once the chicken mixture was done, it was time to get the taco shells  into the oven and heat them up for about 10 min.

The taco shells were filled with the chicken mixture, shredded lettuce, diced tomato and a mixture of shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese.  The chicken had an extreme flavor from the Mojito Lime marinade, the honey, the Santa Fe cream cheese and our seasoning.  The chicken was good enough to eat alone, because of the different layers of flavor that were obtained, but the tacos made it a wholesome meal, that was both delicious and very satisfying.  So, the next time you're thinking about what to make for dinner, consider this simple, but tasty treat. It can also be done with chicken breast  Hope you will enjoy it, as much as we do.  Buen Provecho!

Brined Pork Chops on the Grill

 Started out by brining six, half-inch pork chops, in a zip lock bag, for approximately 5 hours.  The brine consisted of 4 cups of water, 1/2 cup of Morton's Tender Quick cure, 1 cup brown sugar and a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar.  The purpose of the brine is to tenderize and help keep the moisture, in the meat. After the five hours, the chops were rinsed off very  thoroughly, to remove any excess saltiness. I then pat dried the chops with paper towels and placed them on the cutting board, to be seasoned.

 Keeping in mind, that brine did have a lot of salt and sweetness, I take into consideration that my seasoning such have a low salt content. The seasoning consisted of California style garlic powder, onion powder, smoked Paprika and about 1 teaspoon of John Henry's Texas Chicken Tickler.  Thoroughly mixed the seasoning, to make sure to have incorporated all the spices and then applied liberally to the chops. Meanwhile, the Kingsford charcoal was lit, in the charcoal chimney, and when the coals were grey, they weared poured down the middle of the kettle, leaving the sides set up for indirect grilling.

 The kettle was sprayed with Weber grill spray, to ensure that meat would not stick to the grill.  The  meat was layered, off the fire and covered for 5 mins. intervals.  After the 5 mins., the chops were flipped, using tongs, and not a fork, because we do not want to pierce the meat and try to retain as much of the juices, as possible.

 After the next 5 mins., the jobs were placed directly over the hot coals for about a minute, on each side, to ensure nice coloring and grill marks.

 This is what they look like, once they were removed from the fire, the chops were foiled and allow to rest for about 10 mins., allowing for the juices to redistribute, within the meat.

This is the finished product, if you look closely, at the cut section, you see a slight pinkish hue on the meat, this is because of the  tenderizeration effect, of the brine. These pork chops were very tasty, flavorful and juicy; besides the brining process, they were also very quick to cook.  Hope you enjoy our latest post and hopefully you will give it a try soon.

Meat Ball Madness

 This event was dubbed " The Midnight Meatball Madness", and was held at the Marriott Executive Suites Hotel, in Charlotte, North Carolina.  This event was held to make 450 pounds of meatballs, for the upcoming Italian Festival, which will be held on May 19-21, at St. Philip Neri's church, in Fort Mill, South Carolina.We had approximately 10 volunteers, that started at 12:01 AM, on Saturday morning, in this effort to make the meatballs.  This would be one of two meatball making sessions, in which the goal is to make close to 1000 pounds a meatballs, which would be sold as meatball sandwiches or with spaghetti.

 The first step in the process was to get the me mixture properly mixed, with all the necessary ingredients.  As luck would have it, the commercial mixer in the facility, was out for repair. Which meant that all the mixing had to be done by hand.  While one person was mixing, the others were rolling out meatballs, and we all took turns at various tasks.

 After the first few meatballs wore rolled out, everyone found their niche, and we were moving right along.  It was estimated, that we would probably be finishing up about six o'clock in the morning, which was our deadline.  The hotel needed their kitchen back,  in order to prepare for the the breakfast crowd and their daily events.  I must say, I personally thought we might be cutting it a little close, with all the work that was ahead.

 Even though everybody was serious about their job, we had a great group of people working together, and had lots of laughs, in the process.  This also made the work atmosphere, a lot more enjoyable and help keep everybody's spirits up and awake.

 Our crew was so efficient and diligent, that before 3 AM, we had finished rolling out all 450 pounds of meatballs, we had one finished rack in the walk-in freezer, cooling down, several racks in the oven, and a few racks waiting to go in the oven, as soon as the others came out.  At this time, we knew, we were well ahead of our predicted schedule.  The coordinator of this event was very kind and generous, in bringing in, several snack items and drinks.  This production ran like a perfectly well oiled machine.

 As the last remaining meatballs were rolled out, we started to form a strategy, of how we were going to start the packing process to transport and freeze the meatballs, for the actual festival dates.

The first rack of meatballs that was in the freezer came out, the second rack when in to the freezer, while the last racks of meatballs, were in the oven.  We were using gallon size Ziploc bags to store the meatballs, and package them inside of 150 quart coolers, for the transport back to the church.  The  packing process was very fast and successful.  At 3:52 AM, the last meatball was packaged and we started to do a quick cleanup. The helpful staff members of the hotel, told us not to worry so much about the cleanup, they actually had a crew coming in to do the morning cleanup, before they started to do their prep work.  Basically, within three hours and 52 mins., we mixed, rolled, baked and packaged all the meatballs, in record time.  What was estimated to be a six hour job, took less than four.  We were all sore and tired, by the end of the day.  It was rather satisfying to have completed this mission and after a well deserved rest, we would feel great gratification and sense of completion, for a well deserved cause.  It was an extreme pleasure to work alongside such fine individuals, as these.  My wife and I still have four trays baked ziti to do for the event.  We really had a great time.