I finally grilled with charcoal
It’s almost the end of the summer and I hadn’t grilled anything over charcoal. I love my gas grill but, really, nothing beats the flavor that charcoal adds to grilled meat.
Gina had found this recipe on Friday and got the chicken marinating. When I got home from work, I told Gina I wasn’t in the mood to cook. She said she already had the chicken marinading and described what was in it. I said, “That will be even better it we marinade it overnight.”
When we were getting the menu together Saturday afternoon, Gina suggested that maybe we grill the chick on charcoal. I agreed. So I dusted off my Smokey Joe and some natural hardwood charcoal that I had been saving for such an occasion. Gina also though some homemade onion rings sounded good and we had the perfect onion for that, thanks to my mom and her overabundant onion crop from her garden.
Natural charcoal is a little harder to get going than normal charcoal, so it took two tries with my chimney. Fortunately, it burns hotter so we didn’t lose a lot of cooking time. It took about 40 minutes to cook the cut up whole chicken, which isn’t too bad.
And was it good? Yes — some of the best chicken we’ve ever had. The mixture of the Asian and the smokey charcoal flavor was excellent. And the onion rings were also heavenly, and the tomatoes from our garden and the corn from my parents was also wonderful. Yes, there was a feast at our house on Saturday night!
And there was plenty of chicken left over for our Sunday lunch! We just warmed it up in the oven and it was just as good as it was the night before.