Tag Archives: grilled chicken

Jun4

Pork Chop Grenades

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Pork Chop Grenades

Pork Chop Grenades

This is one of those summer hits that people will be wanting your recipe for. A few years ago, I saw a recipe on one of those recipe chain Facebook posts for stuffed chicken breasts that used these same stuffing ingredients, and thus, eventually the pork chop grenade was born. At first, I made this recipe using chicken thighs, but it has expanded to the “other white meat”, and I’ve gotta say it’s pork perfection! But feel free to sub chicken or even pork tenderloin in place of a pork chop here – it really is versatile!

Ingredients:
Pork chops or pork steaks with bones removed
BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Rays here)
1-2 strips of bacon per grenade
1/2 jalapeño sliced per grenade
Your favorite grilling seasoning or just plain salt and pepper
About 1 T cream cheese per grenade

1. This recipe graduated from chicken to pork because these bone-in pork steaks were on sale for a steal at the store. See what being a savvy shopper can do for you? 🙂 I just cut out the bones of the steaks before using them. Obviously, the easiest thing would be to buy thin cut boneless pork chops.
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2. Sprinkle your favorite grilling seasoning on your meat and put about a tablespoon of cream cheese on each chop.
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3. Using either the back of a spoon or your fingers, mush the cream cheese out a little bit and place 1/2 a jalapeño on each. I like to keep a few seeds and stems in mine to keep them spicy! Please excuse the blurry pic 🙂
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4. Now here is the messy part! You’re going to wrap these up into grenades using 1-2 slices of bacon each. Try to seal them up with the bacon because it helps keep the stuffing inside. I like to do a little fresh cracked black pepper on top of the bacon because it’s delicious and it looks pretty.
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5. Now you can decide to either bake or grill these. Normally, I grill mine but now that I’m living in Amarillo AKA the US’s windiest city , I don’t particularly enjoy grilling in gale force winds, so I bake them. I use a grilling sheet I’ve sprayed with non-stick spray on top of a cookie sheet/jelly roll pan lined with foil for easy cleanup. Bake at 375 for anywhere from 45-60 minutes based on the thickness of your meat. Then take them out and turn the heat up to 400 or crank the grill up.
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6. Now you’re going to baste them with your favorite BBQ sauce and put back in for 10-15 minutes. Again, you don’t want to overcook them, so keep in mind the thickness of your meat before you cook it.
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7. Your grenades are ready to eat! Let’s cut into one of these babies and check out that creamy spicy perfection!
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Dec11

Pantry Soup

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Pantry Soup

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Every week (or just about) I make this soup with leftovers from what I’ve cooked the few days before. I call it “pantry soup” because it’s something you can use almost anything in your pantry for, and super simple to make. Usually, I take whatever leftover meat (grilled chicken in this case, but feel free to use grilled pork, leftover steak, or keep it vegetarian and leave out the meat which I do as well sometimes) and add it to a plethora of vegetables and seasonings from my freezer/pantry and serve it over cornbread. It’s super simple and very good! Even my very picky 1 year old loves it.

Ingredients:
Chopped up leftover meat (or none if you’re doing meat free)
1 onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic chopped
1 potato chopped (in this case I used a sweet potato, but I also use red potato, purple potato, or whatever is in my pantry and desperately needs to be cooked before it goes bad)
1 bag of frozen vegetables (in this recipe I used a bag of mixed frozen veggies, but use whatever you’ve got. If you have baby carrots in the fridge chop those babies up and throw in a can of corn. Use whatever you have!)
1 can of beans – do not drain prior to putting in soup – (I used Great Northern Beans here, but use pinto, black, etc.)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can diced green chiles
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp cumin powder (optional for smoky flavor)
1 chicken bouillon cube
Pepper
About 3 cups of water
Drizzle of olive oil

1. Throw your chopped onion, garlic salt, pepper to taste, and olive oil in a pot and saute on medium high for about 15 minutes. Then add chopped garlic and saute a few more minutes. Then add all your veggies in there. -2

2. Chop up your leftover meat and throw that in there as well. In this case, it was leftover grilled chicken.
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3. Add your canned goods to your soup mix, Italian seasoning, cumin powder, chicken bouillon, and water. You want to use enough water that everything is covered by about 1/2 inch. Bring to a boil and let it simmer with the lid on for an hour before serving. I like to serve mine over cornbread and top with chopped green onions and Louisiana hot sauce! Yum!
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Oct11

Grilled Chicken Thighs

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Grilled Chicken Thighs

Grilled Chicken Thighs

I love grilling chicken thighs and have them at least once a week in our house. I’m always looking for new ways to serve them since we have them so often and on the lookout for tasty new ways to season them. When my parents came back from vacation in St. Martin they were raving about how the French and the Dutch chefs there cooked their BBQ. They use Spanish style seasonings (GOYA brand) on their meat before grilling and the unique blend of seasonings gives the meat a really delicious and different flavor. My parents are foodies and whenever they travel to new places and eat something tasty they almost always find some way back to the chef and get his recipes out of him. I can’t tell you how many times my mom has come back from vacation and spent half the time talking about her vacation telling me about all the new foods they tried and recipes/ideas they’ve brought back. This grilled chicken thigh recipe is so simple anyone can do it and only requires three seasonings.

Goya Seasonings

Ingredients:
GOYA brand Sazonador Total “The Perfect Seasoning”
GOYA brand Adobo “All Purpose Seasoning With Pepper”
GOYA Sazon “Con Culantro y Achiote” (This comes in a small box with little packets of seasonings inside the box. Note which flavor used here because there are several different ones.)
1 package boneless skinless chicken thighs

1. I like to season my chicken first thing in the morning after I wake up so the chicken has all day to marinate in this yummy goodness before I grill it. It’s not 100% necessary, but it sure does make a difference in taste I think. I like to line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray and season both sides of the chicken liberally with all three seasonings. Once both sides of chicken are seasoned cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until ready to grill. **Note** Use 1/2 of Sazon packet on one side of the chicken, 1/2 on the other.

2. Once your chicken is ready to cook you have a couple different options:
– Get your grill going and either cook on grates of grill or cook on foil piece chicken has been sitting on that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Cooking directly on grates will leave grill marks and give the outside a little crustier texture and cooking on the foil will leave chicken slightly juicier and no grill marks. It’s really up to you how you like your chicken.
– If you don’t have a grill you can cook this in the oven leaving chicken on foil and cookie sheet at 425 for about 40-45 minutes.

Whatever you do, don’t overcook your chicken. Boneless skinless chicken thighs are some of the tastiest and juiciest cuts of meat and the worst thing you can do is overcook it. Keep an eye on your chicken and cut into it to see if it’s finished. I’ve never once checked the temp of my chicken (I don’t even own a thermometer) but if you feel so inclined the temp the FDA recommends chicken to be is 165 F. However, once you take the chicken off it will “carry over” cook which means the temp will continue to rise and cook on the inside even though you have taken it off the heat. So if you’re standing there with your thermometer take it off at about 160 so it doesn’t cook too much and dry out. If you’re like me and not going to do any of that, do it the simple way and just cut into a piece of chicken as a test piece and see if it’s done. If so, have a little snack, no one’s lookin 🙂