One sure cure seems to be to try something entirely new for me - or at least a dish that I have not done in years. This past weekend I grilled a whole red snapper and last night did a whole chicken.
I'll post pictures at a later date, but the chicken recipe has potential worth sharing. Mostly because all of have whole chickens available to you -- and not so much the whole red snapper. Right?
Start with a good-looking whole chicken that has not been fed a diet of steroids and looks all puffy and overly fat. I bought a Perdue bird nicely packages with the innards stuffed inside.
Wash and place the bird breast-side down and with kitchen shears slice up the back from the tail to the neck cavity. Go up one side of the back from the taill and then repeat on the other side until you have removed a strip about an inch in width right up through the middle of the bird. That will allow you to spread the chicken out flat. Once you have done that, look inside and you will see the rib bones. Snip them out and further press the chicken out on your cutting board. Nice and flat.
Drizzle some veggie oil, rub it in all over the bird and season all surfaces with yoour chice of grilling herbs (at a minimum salt and pepper). Entomb the critter with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Meantime, we'll prep the glaze and mopping sauce. And what a glaze it is!
Ingredients for this include:
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 T honey
2 T maple syrup
3 T light brown sugar
2 jiggers your favorite Kentucky bourbon
2 T BBQ sauce
1/2 t red pepper flakes
Combine well and set aside with a brush for mopping on the grill.
Start your charcoal on one side of the grill and get a old metal pan or aluminium deep dish (no larger than about 8 inches long and 5 inches wide) you can toss away and fill it with water (about 2-3 inches).
All this will allow you to cook the chicken indirectly for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. I added some hickory wood chips after the first hour of cooking.
Place the bird on the grill breast up. Roast covered for an hour, drizzling with your bourbon-laced glaze about every 20 minutes. Obviously, you'll be sampling the unused bourbon while this process is in the works. Roast for 1 1/2 hours and flip. Continue the process for the rest of the alloted time. Internal temperature needs to be 185 degrees to be done. During the final cooking time place the bird breast-side up directly over the coals. If the leg or wing comes free while moving her around that's a good sign your chicken is about done.
I'll take and post pictures next time around. Sandy claims "This is the best thing you've EVER done on the grill."
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