There are people in life who like to fly by the seat of their pants and just take things as they come. Then there are those who like to have everything planned out ahead of time. @mrsbozz definitely fits further into the second category. Myself on the other had would probably be a third tier of person who sits somewhere in between. I wouldn't say one is better than the other, as they both have certain advantages.
Probably one of the best advantages for me of my wife fitting in that second category is the fact that she plans out all our meals for the week ahead of time. Then on the weekend she prepares them so we can simply heat them up when we get home from work through the week. It never fails that during the weekend she almost always includes one meal that needs to be grilled. Especially when the weather starts to get warmer. Sometimes it's multiple meals.
That was the plan this past weekend, and since I was already going to have the grill going, she thought I could kill two birds with one stone and use one of my cast iron pans to cook off the taco meat we needed.
I got the grill going and sprayed some avocado oil in the pan. Then I threw some onions in and waited for the grill to get hot.
One of the things I love about the Weber Kettle is how versatile they are. It's pretty easy to find replacement parts for them because they are all standard, which also makes it easy for other companies to create "mods" and accessories for them. You can get a rotisserie attachment for your kettle, a pizza oven, a electric hopper to turn it into a pellet style grill, and tons of other stuff.
I shared a post a while ago where I used the Slow N Sear that I bought a while ago in my kettle. More recently, I picked up a Vortex.
Unfortunately, this past weekend the cook didn't necessitate it, but you better believe I will be sharing it with you the first time I use it!
This is the first cast iron pan I ever bought and I totally love it. It's heavy as hell, but it has a good seasoning on it and it always gets the job done for me. The biggest problem with cooking over charcoal like this is how hard it is to manage the temperature. I had to have the pan half on the coals and half off. Even then it was still a bit too hot. I should have built my fire differently, but I needed to cook other stuff, so that made it difficult.
This is where having more than one kettle grill would be really nice.
After the ground chicken was browned off along with the onions, I threw in our special mix of taco seasoning. @silversaver888 wrote a post a while ago about making your own spice blends. @mrsbozz and I have been doing that for a while now with taco seasoning because the McCormick stuff you buy at the store has a ton of sodium in it. I don't really do exact measurements, but our blend consists of this:
- Garlic Powder
- Chili Powder
- Cumin
- Onion Powder
- Oregano
Some people really hate cumin and others don't. The cool thing about this is you can adjust the base ingredients as you see fit. I usually go heavier on the chili powder and garlic powder.
With the taco meat all cooked off, it was time to get the rest of the stuff cooking. In the foil packet we had potatoes and onions cut up and seasoned with a bit of olive oil. The chicken breasts I tenderized a bit with a meat hammer and then we marinated them in a mixture of pickle juice, cayenne pepper, chili powder, brown sugar, paprika, and garlic powder. It gives you sort of a Nashville Hot style chicken without all the oil.
I know that seems like a lot of chicken for just two people, but remember I said @mrsbozz likes to prep ahead of time. That chicken actually gave us four meals through the week.
For myself, I picked up a nice pork steak a while ago and decided to throw that on the grill. As you can see, when we bought it, we immediately vacuum sealed it and threw it in the freezer so it would be ready when I wanted it. @mrsbozz doesn't eat pork steak, so this is a bit of a treat for me.
As I indicated before, the fire was screaming hot, which left a bit of a mess in my cast iron pan, but it worked wonders for cooking the pork steak in no time.
Meanwhile the chicken was doing its thing on the indirect side of the grill.
I really think pork steak is an underrated cut of meat. It gets a lot of love down near St. Louis, but outside of that I think people tend to overlook it. I was introduced to the cut when I was a young adult and it has forever changed my life.
As you can see, we cooked off some brussels sprouts as well to go with dinner.
Remember I said that chicken gave us enough for four meals? These are the containers I filled after cutting it all up that night. A little bit of it went on @mrsbozz's plate for dinner, the rest went into these two containers. Half for us to use on Nashville hot sandwiches the next day and the rest she used for her lunches through the week.
I know a lot of my posts have to do with the occasional times that we happen to eat out. If you were to judge my diet solely on those posts you would have every right to critique my diet. The truth is, the photo above is more indicative of what a typical meal looks like for my wife and I. A protein (usually pretty lean, but not always), some kind of green vegetable, and then a side of potatoes or some other low calorie item. Honestly, the worst part of this meal is probably the small amount of cheese I put on the potatoes. Everything else is pretty "clean".
Hopefully one day soon I will put the Vortex through its paces so I can share it with you. I'm thinking of doing buffalo wings!
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