Sticky BBQ chicken

Last weekend was Fathers Day here in the UK, so we decided to have a family BBQ (reasoning I like to BBQ, I had a decent box of craft beers to drink and it was warm weather)

I did a few things, a standard pulled pork & coleslaw, burgers (I always enjoy burgers, and Tescos have started selling brioche burger buns again, so was a no brainer), chicken legs with oregano/sumac (this is SeriousEats fault - I happened to read a recipe they had about grilled chicken with za'atar which was basically sumac plus some other herbs, so when I then saw the sumac in the supermarket I impulse bought some) - but to be honest, it was a little bit of a let down.  The pork wasn't as good as my previous outing (I'm putting it down to a worse piece of meat) and the chicken was a little overdone. However, the one highlight was a BBQ chicken experiment.

I didn't really put any thought into it, I just thought I would slap some dry rub and BBQ sauce on some chicken legs and leave it at that - and they came out better than I expected.

They had a good contrast of the standard sweet/smoky BBQ flavour you would expect, plus a little heat and the deep red, sticky effect you have with good BBQ wings (these were legs though).


There are two elements, to it - one is a basic update to my last BBQ sauce (although either would work) and my latest dry-rub, which is pretty basic, but can be used on pretty much anything (as I have said before, stick it on potato wedges etc). The key is to apply the rub to the chicken before grilling, then 10 minutes or so before they are ready to come off, liberally brush the legs with the BBQ sauce and grill further - This will thicken up the sauce and give it the sticky consistency, but applying the sauce at the start of cooking will just result in burnt sauce.

BBQ Sauce - Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons american mustard (like Frenchs)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• couple dashes hot sauce (something like Franks Hot Sauce)
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 3 tablespoon cider vinegar
• salt & pepper seasoning
• 250ml ketchup

1. Again, really simple - stick all the ingredients except the ketchup into a saucepan and mix and then bring to a simmer
   
   
2. Add the ketchup and a tablespoon or two of water and simmer for 30minutes or so - or until the sauce is reduced to a BBQ sauce like consistency

Dry rub

Dry rubs are really simple, just get all the ingredients and mix them together. They can happily last a few months in a jar so will last the summer - although this quantity is reduced - this probably covers a medium piece of pulled pork (1-2 kg) and 8 chicken legs or so.

• 1 1/2 tablespoon coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 tablespoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 tablespoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional - adjust according to how hot you like)

Recipe: Chicken nuggets & beans

Having moved on from perfecting my grilled cheese, I have a new food obsession: Southern fried chicken.  To be honest, it is something I have thought about for a while, but have always skipped making it on account of not having a deep fat fryer (and generally not wanting to deep fry things).  However, last weekend, I was planning on making some baked beans with my older boy and suddenly thought maybe we should also make some chicken nuggets. I then thought, why not make chicken nuggets but trying to get a similar taste/texture to southern fried chicken?

Now, there are two elements to the experiment:

1. Making up a recipe for the batter/seasoning
   
   
2. Finding the best non-deep frying alternatives

Plus, there's the baked beans.

KFC style chicken nuggets

I guess I should clarify that the title is probably more aspirational (kind of anyway, really we are aiming for much better than KFC, plus healthier) - also, as mentioned above, we were free-styling with this one and will be a work in progress)

Ingredients

• 400 grams chopped chicken breast
• 300ml buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal/polenta (can be swapped for flour)
• 1 teaspoon mixed italian herbs (can be swapped for just one tablespoon of dried oregano, basil & thyme)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• vegetable oil for frying (if you are frying)

Method

1. Leave the chicken to rest in a bowl with the buttermilk - I put mine in the buttermilk first thing in the morning before cooking in the evening, but if you don't have time then just stick them in the buttermilk whilst you prepare the rest of the ingredients
   
   
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in another bowl, add a tablespoon of the buttermilk to the dry mix and stir through - this is to achieve that nobbly type texture that you often get on KFC (see the picture above of the coated chicken), and I got this tip from Kenji at the FoodLab (although also apparently a known technique) - the alternative technique suggested to achieve this effect is to double-dip the chicken (buttermilk, roll in batter, dip in buttermilk then back in the batter).
   
   
3. Cook the chicken - I tried both shallow frying and oven baking:
   
   Shallow fry - This was the first approach I tried, the problem was I was too conservative with the oil, and the chicken was sticking to the pan a bit, which resulted in a lot of the batter falling off every time I had to scrape it up to turn over.  I think the recommended amount is about one inch of oil.  The chicken tasted good, and the batter had a good oil-y texture, but  still seemed too fried for me.
   
   Oven bake - The second half of the batch went on a very lightly oiled baking tray in the oven, at about 180degrees (fan oven), cook until the chicken is cooked (I think it was probably about 20 minutes for me).  The batter remained intact, and the seasoned batter tasted good, but it wasn't the texture (or appearance) of fried chicken.
   

It largely tasted pretty good, and went down well, but in my opinion it needs a few tweaks:

• It tasted too oregano-y - I will keep some Italian herbs in the mix, but probably reduce it
• There wasn't enough black pepper.  Pepper is a big part of normal KFC type seasoning, and whilst I didn't want to replicate it completely, it needed more

My next experiment will be an updated batter, used with chicken legs but cooked on the BBQ - The BBQ seems to be pretty good at keeping chicken legs juicy, which I am hoping will provide more moisture to the batter without needing a tonne of oil.

Baked beans 

In our house, we actually call these "tomato beans" - because if you are familiar with "Reasons my kid is crying", we feared that if we called them baked beans, and then the boys ate them, they may take a grievance with the fact that they aren't actually the baked beans they might expect.

And honestly, there isn't really any recipe/reason to this one. Its just tomatoes and beans, then anything we decide to throw in.  But here is more or less what we put in the last batch (which went down well, including with my wife - which made me think they would actually go down well as a side at our next BBQ):

Ingredients

• 400 gram tin of tomatoes (preferably whole, but doesn't matter)
• 400 gram tin haricot beans
• punch of sugar
• smoked sweet paprika
• dash of balsamic vinegar
• tomato purée
• squirt tomato ketchup (optional - this is just for fun)
• any other spices/herbs you want

Method

1. First step is what we call "messy hands" - jam the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them all up (this is why we use whole tomatoes - its more fun for the boy to squash them)
   
   
2. Add the rest of the ingredients - this is a fun one to cook just because its all done by taste really, and the boy gets to taste the ingredients as we add them in and taste the work in progress as we go
   
   
3. Purée the tomato sauce in a blender/food processor
   
   
4. Add the tomato and beans to a pan, simmer on the hob until heated through

Recipe: Barbecue pulled pork

We have now had two fairly warm/dry-ish weekends on the bounce which is enough for me to declare it BBQ season!  I decided to kick off with some pulled pork - which requires minimal fuss or BBQ maintenance, and mostly just falls back on slow cooking.

It turned out really well - better than my last pulled pork (which was still a big hit at the bbq), and people seemed to enjoy it.

The BBQ sauce

(my coleslaw/pulled pork/bbq sauce sandwich made with leftovers today!) 

I decided not to be too wild with the sauce and just create a simple sweet/smokey ketchup based sauce for the pork - it only takes 10 minutes and is super simple (plus, it can actually be kept in the fridge for a while if you make more of it - this recipe is basically just the amount needed for this amount of pork)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon honey
• couple dashes worcestshire sauce
• couple dashes hot sauce (something like Franks Hot Sauce)
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/ teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• salt & pepper seasoning
• 250ml ketchup

Method

1. Stick all the ingredients except the ketchup in a saucepan, stir together over a medium heat
2. It should fairly quickly become a dark, tar-like substance (sounds delicious right?), once combined stir in the ketchup and heat further. It should probably be a reasonable consistency after about 10 minutes simmering, but if not then just reduce until it hits your desired thickness
3. Transfer to a bowl/jar/bottle for serving

The Pork

It was actually a massive piece of pork that I ended up cooking - having fed 4 people for dinner and lunch, plus with about a third left over.  For the rub, I just used the end of a previous batch (see recipe here) - which is good timing as it means I will be creating a new rub pretty soon.  For reasons of convenience and time, I cheated on the cooking and did the bulk of the work in the oven.

Ingredients

• A decent piece of pork shoulder - the piece I had was easily 1.5kg. If you have a butcher or decent meat counter at your local supermarket you can just tell them how many you are cooking for and they should be able to advise
• Some dry rub (see here for the one I used) - enough to liberally season the pork - I probably had about 5 heaped tablespoons (going by eye)
• A barbecue with a lid 
• Smoking chips (optional)

Method

1. Liberally season the pork with the dry rub and pat on with your fingertips
   
   
2. Sit the pork in a roasting tray - ideally sitting on a rack if possible so not sitting directly on the base of the tin
   
   
3. Add cold water to the tin to about 1cm deep (again, if using the rack, fill so the water doesn't reach the pork), then cover the tin with a foil tent
   
   
4. Heat the oven to 110 degrees centigrade (for a fan oven - adjust accordingly for your own oven, but probably adding around 20 degrees for non fan) and put the pork in
   
   
5. Cook in the oven for 4+ hours (depending on your time and size of the pork) - I cooked mine in the oven for about 6 hours
   
   
6. As you are approaching time to remove the pork from the oven, start the barbecue. Once flames have simmered own and the coals are white hot, but the pork on the barbecue and cook indirectly (e.g. have the hot coals on one side of the barbecue and place the pork on the other side so not directly over the coals
   
   
7. Add your smoking chips if using, and close the barbecue - leave to cook for at least an hour (I left mine on the barbecue for more like 3 hours), replenishing smoking chips appropriately
   
   
8. Remove from barbecue and fork the pork to serve (making sure it is cooked properly of course!)

Birthday cake

It was my wife's birthday recently, so I had to go on the hunt for a good cake recipe. It's fairly un-familiar ground for me, normally when looking for a recipe or technique there are one or two sites that I would be my de-facto go-to sites, but I don't really have that baseline for cake recipes.

My not-very-inspired googling lead to this site:  The best chocolate cake recipe ever and failing to find anything else that was convincing enough I used this.  One other plus of the recipe is that it is measured in cups - which is much more child friendly - with digital scales its far too easy to get precious about precise figures, but its much easier to let a 3 year old just fill up some cups and not worry than to get them to read the scales!

The cake was fine. Wife was happy that it tasted good and was very moist, but my conclusion is that I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake. I mean, of course I like brownies, and sticky fudgey goo that resembles a cake, but chocolate-y sponge-y type cakes just don't do it for me.

I just used the sponge recipe, and only made one tier and then used a chocolate icing recipe from Peggy Porschen - which for me was the highlight. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that any recipe that is made up of cream, cream cheese, sugar, chocolate and butter could be anything but amazing.  The original was taken from her Boutique Baking - I amended the ingredients for convenience (enough to easily cover a cake)

Ingredients

• 225 grams sifted icing sugar
• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 70ml whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
• 80 grams choc chunks
• 180 grams cream cheese (this is more than needed, but I just jammed in the whole tub of phillidelphia)

Method

1.  Heat the cream on a medium heat, once it brings to simmer take it off the heat and pour it over the choc chunks and caster sugar in a bowl. Mix together until smoothe and glossy. Set aside to set at room temperature.
   
   
2. In another bowl, whisk the cream cheese until light and creamy
   
   
3. In a final bowl add the icing sugar, butter and salt - cream until light and fluffy
   
   
4. Once the choc mix has set, probably only 10 minutes or so - I didn't have to wait around whilst doing the other bits - add a third of it into the cream cheese and mix through
   
   
5. Next, add the remaining choc mix to the buttercream, mixing as you go. Once fully mixed jam in the choc-cheese mix and combine again.

Recipe: Chicken, bacon & tarragon pie

So this is what happens when International Pi day and Mothers day fall on the same weekend.

As it was mothers day, we had to cook something, and with my twitter feed largely be filled with Pi/Pie related content it seemed like this was the inevitable outcome.


I was originally planning on making a beef and mushroom pie - which would have probably ended up just more-or-less being the same as my slow cooked beef casserole recipe as a pie filling. However, this time, time did not permit so I switched to a faster cooking chicken option.  Most of this recipe is just random connections - I know chicken and leek pies are a thing, and my wife has made some nice chicken and tarragon soup before. And then bacon. Doesn't bacon go well with most things?  (as it turns out the bacon provides a nice smokey savoury taste that compliments the tarragon nicely)

Ingredients

• 500 grams diced chicken
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 leeks, chopped
• 4 rashers smoked bacon, diced
• 500 ml chicken stock
• 170 ml double cream (well, 100-200ml, the tub i bought was 170ml)
• 3-4 sprigs of tarragon
• Puff pastry (how ever much you need for the pie dish!) - bought or make your own.

Method 

You can pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees  (fan oven) if you want, but ideally you will want to cool the fillings before putting in the pie - so if you are doing the filling in advance, don't bother pre-heating now!)

1. Melt the butter in a pan and then add the leeks and cook until soft
   
   
2. Add the chicken and seal the meat
   
   
3. Add the bacon and cook for a minute or two - it needn't be long
   
   
4. Add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer
   
   
5. Add the double cream, stir through
   
   
6. Finely chop the tarragon and add to the filling, stir through
   
   
7. Reduce the sauce on a medium heat until it's reduced by about half - it should be fairly thick, so it's not too runny in the pie
   
   
8. Line pie dish with pastry
   
   
9. Leave the fillings to cool, then spoon into pie dish and cover the pie with more pastry
   
   
10. Cook in the oven for around 30minutes at about 180 degrees (the filling is cooked, si we are just cooking the pastry, so just keep an eye on it and make sure the pastry is browning ok, and not burning etc

I served with cheesey mash.

Recipe: Slow cooked smokey chilli

My parents came to visit again this last weekend, which once again provided the opportunity/necessity to cook something nice, whilst not spending too much time locked away in the kitchen. So no surprises, I once again turned to slow cooking with my trusty casserole dish.

The weekend before, The Guardian had featured in their food pullout a piece on the top 10 chili recipes - as it happens they were almost all non chili-con-carne recipes, and mostly jams and stuff. Anyhow, it put chili in my head, so eventually the subliminal messaging came out when I cooked.

I made chili-con-carne lots of times whilst I was a student, and younger, but it was never much to it - some mince beef, chili powder, cumin and tomatoes - quick, cheap and easy.  But this time I decided that there are probably a lot more satisfying chili's to be had.  As always, I wanted it to be rich, but I also decided I wanted a really smokey flavor, invoking images of slow cooked chili on damp fire coals.  So I set about reading.  I had an idea for some things that could go in (chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, oregano) but decided to do some research, and ended up whittling away quite some time reading lots of them, noting the bits that I liked or thought might work - as you might expect, recipes for great chili are quite divided! Pork or beef or both? mince or steaks? tomatoes or not?  I was originally planning on using liquid smoke to provide the smokey flavour, but didn't get a chance to pick any up, so have used smoked paprika instead.

Anyway, from my scribbled notes, and what I then didn't forget to buy from the supermarket, here is the recipe..

Ingredients

Serves about 4-5 people 

• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic chopped/minced
• 400g mince pork
• 400g mince beef
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 2 400g tins of tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 3 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional - and adjust to taste)
• 1 large red Romano pepper
• a knob of butter

Method

Preheat fan oven to about 130 degrees

1. Chop the onions, throw them in the casserole dish with the butter and cook over a gentle heat until translucent and soft
   
   
2. Throw in the garlic and cook for a few more minutes
   
   
3. Add the pork and beef - continue to cook until browned
   
   
4. Stir in the tomato puree - cook for a further few minutes
   
   
5. Mix in the sugar and herbs/spices
   
   
6. Mix in the tinned tomatoes and the chopped red pepper
   
   
7. Fill up one of the empty tomato tins with cold water and mix that in
   
   
8. Cover and stick in the oven - cook for anything from 2-6 hours!(this can be adjusted to your schedule)  Stirring occasionally - if it gets too thick then add a bit more cold water, if it isn't reducing fast enough then turn up the oven (slow cooking is very forgiving - nothing happens too fast and its unlikely this will get over cooked)

I served with lime-cilantro rice (rice with fresh lime and chopped corriander) and easily went to 5 people.

Recipe: Shop bought tomato & basil pasta sauce

So a few weeks ago, my wife came back from our new local Waitrose (a supermarket) with a tub of fancy organic tomato and basil pasta sauce.  We don't normally eat fancy tomato sauces, but having watched Eat Well for Less on TV that week and seen a bit they did on how much sugar was in brand-name pasta sauces she decided to buy something fancy and organic.

The sauce was nice. Simple, as you might expect, but expensive (also as you might expect) - at £3.50 a tub (which fed my Wife and I, plus a child size bowl of pasta for elder son) it seems pretty nuts to me.

Anyway, having heard the price, and then having read the ingredients (tomato, garlic, onion, butter) I decided to reverse engineer it. I have made lots of tomato sauces, but usually just basic tomato/vinegar/sugar type things - normally something to compliment other meals (in a lasagne for example) which is usually fine, but they don't really provide the same shop bought taste (not that this is a bad thing - but pasta sauces from a jar are never just tomato, they have a lot of other crap going on).

So yesterday afternoon whilst I was making pizza with my eldest son (following on from our welsh cakes) I had to make a tomato sauce for the base so decided to have a first pop at this sauce.  It was a few weeks since we have had the fancy-organic sauce, so honestly can't remember what that tasted like - but this sauces tastes good, and my wife agreed that it definitely tastes reminiscent of a fancy branded pasta sauce (in a good way) - plus there is no crap in it!

Ingredients

• half an onion, fairly finely chopped
• a clove of garlic, finely chopped (or crushed)
• a carrot, peeled and finely chopped
• 100 grams of butter (I guess - this was by eye - but a chunk to cook the veg, then a chunk at then end - you could prob go with two decent sized tablespoons)
• Tomatoes - I used 680 ml plain passata, but that was because we had that and no tinned tomatoes, if we had tinned I would have used those. You could probably use a 400 gram tin of chopped tomatoes and not adjust the other components and get pretty similar results to be honest.
• tablespoon tomato puree
• handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped

Method

1. Melt half the butter in a saucepan
   
2. Add the chopped onions, and cook on a medium heat until soft and slightly translucent
   
3. Add the chopped garlic and cook for another minute or so
   
4. Add the chopped carrots, and cook until soft - you can take you time with this
   
5. Add the tablespoon of tomato purée and stir through - cook for another 2-3 minutes
   
6. Add the tomato passata and cook for 10 minutes or so. Don't reduce it so much that it gets thick, you want it still fairly liquid at this point (we will blend it later, so it needs to support the blended solids from the veg) - if it is getting thick just stir in some cold water whilst cooking
   
7. Transfer the sauce to a liquidiser/blender and blend until smooth (and, well, the consistency of a shop bough sauce)
   
8. Add the second half of the butter - buzz it again in the blender to mix that through - this will bind the sauce and give it a richer, glossier finish
   
9. Add the chopped basil - If finely chopped you could leave it at that, but I blended it again to finish off.
   
10. Serve with pasta, like you would your favourite tomato & basil shop bought sauce.