A Grilled Chicken Sandwich for Dinner

It's always sandwich time, baby
Photo Credit: TH

My last night of making dinner for myself as a temporary bachelor involved a grill. If you're surprised by this, welcome to It's Eatin' Season and my online presence in general. Cooking food outdoors with any kind of heat, direct or indirect, is sort of a staple of my cuisine, whether self-made or otherwise. As with many stereotypical dudebros, I believe sandwiches are a perfectly normal thing to eat for any meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, or the mythical fourthmeal. I also do not have the hate in my heart for boneless, skinless chicken breast, especially when it's already in my freezer and I don't have to shell out extra money for it. No, it's not nearly as naturally flavorful as a thigh or the bone-in variant or any other dark meat, but sometimes, a blank canvas will do. You can still add flavor to the hunk of meat.

The chicken is easy to prep. The technique is simple. The skill comes with patience, letting it cook enough so that you don't get sick but not leaving it on the fire too long so that you're chewing sawdust. Chicken is done at 165°F. I like it done a little more because it's what I grew up with and I'm a weirdo who is afraid of getting the runs. It happens. As long as the center point of the thickest part of the meat is at 165, you should be fine. I also prefer thin chicken that has a little bit of a chew. I've eaten thick chicken breast pieces, and the texture, even when done to my liking, if it's too thicccccccc, it has a weird bite and mouthfeel. So I took the bigger breast piece, butterflied it, and then pounded each piece until it was nice and flat. Again, the beauty of cooking is that as long as you aren't poisoning anyone, you can cook any way you want to, whatever size, texture, flavor. The only thing that is as personal and subjective is to whom you are attracted sexually.

One certainty about a chicken breast is that it rarely stands on its own. Even the most flavorful piece of meat like a ribeye steak needs some salt and pepper to coax out the maximum potential. Chicken breast needs more, not just seasoning but a little extra fat to help along the cooking process. I basted each side of each piece with black pepper, garlic powder, olive oil, and Trader Joe's chili lime seasoning, which contained the salt. After grilling for about ten minutes over medium heat on my propane grill, and the chicken came out just the way I liked it without drying out. Chicken is such a delicate thing to get completely right that I am shocked it has become the go-to meat for the universal, non-vegan palate.

AS for the toppings, the cotija cheese and the guacamole needed no preparation. You can make your own guac, and if it's a talent of yours, you totally should. I was a little pressed for time and didn't want to deal with temperemental avocado on a snap decision. The Lidl store brand hot guacamole was the perfect answer to my prayers. As for the grill-roasted aromatic vegetables, I used a tried-and-true method of getting them where I needed them to be. I diced half an orange pepper and a small yellow onion, seasoned them with the same stuff I did the chicken, wrapped them in aluminum foil, and put them right on the grill, for a few minutes on the bottom rack and the rest of the time on the top rack where they would get all soft and translucent but not too mushy. After combining the ingredients on a crostini roll or two, and it was a perfect dinner combining all the good things about eating savorily in a hand-held package.

Chicken breast doesn't have to be something to turn your nose at if you treat it right. Sandwiches are a dinner food. Hank Hill is absolutely correct to have love for propane. You can make delicious food out of rejected ingredients with methods that are culinarily shunned if you take care. Food isn't about pretense. It's about satisfaction. Cook and eat what make you satisfied, both your belly and your soul.