Sunday Dinner - 21 September 2008

The summer of 2008 has come to a close but the weather is still nice enough to grill outside. It's hard to tell how many more nice Sundays we will get for grilling but I am taking advantage of them while I can.

I try to do simple Sunday Dinner Episodes that are easy to reproduce in the home or outside on the grill. I think this weeks episode is a great example of this. Let me introduce you to Brick Chicken....

This is one of those things I have been wanting to try for sometime now. I was going to do it last weekend but the weather prevented me from trying. I really doesn't get much easier than this for cooking. Just follow along and see.

First the cast of characters for the first scene of this episode.


You may recognize these characters if you have been following along for the last few months. That's right these characters are for brining a chicken. But before we an brine the bird we have one thing that needs to be done.

We must cut the backbone out so the chicken will lay flat on the grill. Once the backbone is out we can mix up the brine, insert the bird and put everything in the ice box for a few hours.

When it comes time to grill take the bird out of the brine, rinse off and pat dry with paper towels. Patting the chicken dry is what will make the skin golden brown and crispy.

Time to get ready to introduce the cast of characters for scene 2.....

Pretty simple eh? I told you this would be simple cooking with simple ingredients. Brush or spray on olive oil and season with whatever seasonings you like. What is in the picture is what I chose, okay I didn't choose these ingredients they came from the my Weber grilling cookbook.

Now this is where this version of cooking chicken is different than others. You place the bird skin side down over high indirect heat and place bricks on top of it.


So you don't think that looks like bricks on top of the bird? Well good eye, since I don't own any bricks I used my cast iron frying pan with a lid on it.

The reason for the bricks (or frying pan) is it presses the skin down onto the grill for more even cooking. The second reason is the bird is suppose to cook a lot more even throughout.

After about 40 minutes flip the bird over and finish cooking it for 5 minutes or so directly over medium hot coals.

After it's cooked and plated with the rest of the meal it looks like this.....


That corn on the cob is best, I cooked it just like I did a couple of weeks ago. The chicken will get a 4.75 out of 5 forks. Nice and juicy, cooked evenly through and nice browning from the weight of the bricks, opps I mean frying pan. Definitely worth another try especially because how easy it is to cook.

In the end though let's be serious, it's just another way to cook chicken.