"Beer Can" Chicken on the Big Green Egg

Sadly our egg got a crack in the fire box, but luckily the Big Green Egg has a lifetime warranty, so they replaced the parts free of charge. This warranted a trip to BBQ Outfitters, where we picked up the new parts and their ceramic "Sittin' Chicken" stand, which emulates beer can chicken without the bad paint chemicals leaching into my organic, happily raised, free-roaming chook. This was hands down the VERY BEST chicken we have EVER EATEN. EVER!!!!!

Glorious. Thank you sweet little chook.

Here's how it went down...

Brine the chicken in 1/4 cup fine grain sea salt, 2 quarts water, a sliced lemon, 4 bay leaves, 2 garlic cloves, 2 tbs onion powder, fresh thyme for 8 hours. Rinse. Pat dry and let it air chill in the fridge for an hour. Crack some fresh pepper all over the chicken plus some garlic and onion powder. We stuffed some sinful truffle butter under the skin of the breast for good measure.

Meanwhile, light the grill and bring it to 400 degrees.

Pour a bottle of beer in the stand (As an homage to my Belgian heritage we used a delicious Belgian beer called Blanche de Bruxelles). We added fresh rosemary, another bay leaf, a celery stick and a few sprigs fresh thyme to the beer. Stuck the stand in the chook's bum and roasted it about an hour until the skin was crisp and the chicken was cooked through. We let it rest under a tent of foil for 20 minutes before carving and reduced the remainder of the beer/chicken juice over low heat in a pot with a dash of sherry vinegar until reduced by half.

Drizzled the sauce over the chook and garnished with fresh tarragon and a fresh tomato salad. THIS is what summer is all about. 

Pugs reflecting on the perfect summer dinner and dreaming of chicken bites.

 

Roasted Corn Salad with Avocado, Tomato & Black Beans

It's corn season!!! The market had fresh, locally grown corn on sale so I thought it would make a wonderful salad paired with some fresh garden tomatoes and a zesty dressing. Let it "marinate" for an hour in the fridge before serving. It's become one of my summertime favorites.

INGREDIENTS
Soak 3 ears of corn with husks on in water for 30 minutes
1/2 cup grape tomatoes sliced in half lengthwise
1/4 cup jicama, cut into strips
1 can organic black beans, rinsed and drained
1 avocado, diced and sprinkled with lime juice to prevent browning
1 handful of cilantro chopped
10 basil leaves, sliced into ribbons (reserve some of the chopped herbs for garnish).
3 tbs crumbled cotija cheese

DRESSING
4 tbs champagne vinegar1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 tbs dijon mustard
juice of one lime and one small orange plus zest
1 tsp sea salt
(combine all ingredients except oil, then slowly drizzle oil into vinaigrette while whisking until it emulsifies- about 2 minutes).

Roast the corn in their husks over a 400 degree grill about 25 minutes until the kernels burst with sweet milk. Let them cool then remove from the husks. Over a large cutting board, slice the kernels off of the cobs. Mix all the ingredients together in a large salad bowl, drizzle with dressing, pinch some more sea salt and fresh pepper over the salad and leave it in the fridge one hour. Let it rest at room temperature about 30 minutes before serving then garnish with more herbs. I crumbled some cotija cheese over the salad for the perfect little flavor punch. (I omitted the cheese for the salad in the photo as we had a vegan over for lunch that day, but it really takes the salad to another level).

Makes 6 servings

Smoked Tomato Caprese Salad

Before we built our pool we had a really nice raised garden, but having suffered through too many boiling hot, swampy summers, we opted for a pool so the garden had to go. I plan to build another garden soon, but in the meantime have a cute little patio garden growing and once I returned form our recent holiday, the tomatoes were ripe and sweet and ready to eat. I've posted a recipe for smoked tomatoes and Buratta cheese and thought I'd copy the same concept with my home grown tomatoes. This recipe was featured in my recent post on rosemary chicken and it's so good I thought it deserved a post of its own.

Smoking the tomatoes first makes them super juicy and bursting with rich tomato juices. We heated our Big Green Egg to about 200 over oak wood. I salted and wrapped the tomatoes in foil, drizzled a bit of oil on them and roasted them till they were just about to blister- roughly 20-30 minutes. I then let them cool to room temp, added fresh basil and some gorgeous little Mozzarella Bocconcini balls, sprinkled a little more coarse salt plus a drizzle of balsamic and olive oil and enjoyed the sweet taste of summer.