I came to work yesterday morning the same as always, and out of nowhere Stuart informs that I am in charge of lunch for 12 people! What?! I thought, “Oh, my, what to cook?” Normally, I would have a great idea, but on 4 hours notice I had no great ideas, so I decided to cook chicken breasts and thighs. We had a Creative Q’ing contest in December, and I decided to use the first place winning Mai Tai Chicken recipe submitted Bad Bob's BBQ Restaurant. It is an awesome recipe and easy to do.
So off to the store I went. I decided that I would also cook a pork tenderloin for a little variety. I started at around 9 am, got the chicken all seasoned up and put in the Smokette that we keep in the run-off room for testing recipes, and proceeded to get ready to season the tenderloin - only to find out that it was bad! I opened the package up and one whiff of it told me it was past its prime – eww! Luckily I had bought enough chicken to cover the tenderloin loss.
The chicken recipe calls for a stuffing that is out of this world, but with not enough time and hands (I still had to do my real job, you know) I opted to leave it out and just use the marinade. At about 10:30 I removed the chicken from the smoker and covered it with the marinade after which I proceeded to the finish line. I put the chicken back in the smoker (now in a pan covered in the marinade) and went to the kitchen and clean up and get the sides all ready to go for the lunch goers.
At about 11:45, I took the chicken out of the marinade put our mild sauce on it, put the chicken right onto the grills, and let it go another 20 minutes and yee-haw! I felt like I had just won a huge award for the greatest food of all! Everyone commented on how great it was and what a wonderful flavor the chicken had, and it made my head swell to an enormous size that is still a little big today. Until a little while ago this morning, that is, when I was informed that some of the thighs were not totally done, and the person that discovered the semi-raw chicken is the one person that I really wanted to impress L. Not real good, but she never said a word about it so thank you to her for keeping my head filled with air and confidence! So that’s a warning to you, be sure to double check your thermometer readings and cut into more than one piece of chicken. The breasts were cooked to perfection, I’ve been told. But to make my blog even better I am going to include the link that is also on the Cookshack website to all the great Creative Q-ers recipes. So the best of luck to all my fellow smoking food friends!
Heather
Comments