Happy July 4th Food Fest! I hope you and your family/friends are having a great weekend of picnics. We did and here are our results.
We had our picnic a day early and had a blast cooking barbecue chicken and grilled veggies. I had two grills going, my mom cutting veggies while my sister was helping me watch the chicken and I was tending the broccoli, cauliflower, onions, zucchini and peppers on the second grill.
We had an amazing food fest! Everyone made something delicious to go with the above from Vidalia Onion Dip to Baked Beans to Strawberry Banana Cheesecake Salad to Deviled Eggs to Pasta Salad and more!
This is the first time I’ve barbecued chicken on the grill because my family usually does hamburgers and hotdogs for picnics.
I used a salt and brown sugar brine for the boneless chicken breasts so they’d be more moist. Then pounded out the chicken so each piece was an even thickness for more even cooking. We heavily seasoned the chicken breasts with Hickory Salt, Montreal Steak Seasoning and Chicken Rub (something I get in Amish Country), then brushed on Barbecue sauce after we flipped them over.
They weren’t perfect because some of them were a bit drier than others because we couldn’t get them off the grill fast enough, but overall I was pleased with the results for my first time. I got my idea of brining and pounding from this article at Fine Cooking. I also used this article at Serious Eats – I especially liked the reference to the science behind brining by Kenji because I have his book, The Food Lab. This book is huge but I love referencing it when trying something new. Someday I’ll read the whole thing! If you want to know what to get a beginning cook or someone who loves to cook, I recommend The Food Lab.
I hope you have as much fun with your celebrations as we did! What did you make or eat?
