BBQ day

I was sitting in the garden, on Friday, looking at the tiny charcoal BBQ, which had been collecting spider webs and such, for the last 2-3 years.. And then I decided to clean it and use it.

    
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the big charcoal bag (which had collected dust in the hall, for the last 2-3 years..) contained smaller charcoal bags, and all you had to do, was to pop one on the BBQ and light its corner with a match. (Yes, a match - I tried it with a lighter first, but it was useless.. Maybe it was just a crappy lighter..) It took maybe about 30 minutes for it to be ready for the food, and I'd used that time to prepare the food for it.

Before I'd even fetched the charcoal bag, I made a spontaneous quickie-marinade for the two chicken breast fillets I had in the fridge;

This & that marinade
dark honey
olive oil
soy sauce
sugar
sea salt
spicy Herbamare
black pepper
white pepper
garlic powder

I mixed all the ingredients in a bowl, and then wrapped the fillets (separately) like this; I took a large sheet of tin foil, folding it in the middle for extra strength.. I spread plenty of my marinade on the sheet - on large enough area for one fillet.. (It's liquidy, of course, but not runny enough to escape from the sheet - if you're worried, though, place it on a plate, so the middle part will be a bit lower than the edges..) Then, I placed a fillet on the marinade pool, and spread some more marinade on top of it.. And finally, I folded the edges up, wrapping the fillet pretty tight in its marinade.. Once I'd wrapped both fillets, I put them in the fridge, where they stayed over 30 minutes, until it was time to put them on the BBQ.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of that early part - maybe next time.. But see below..

    
On top left, you can see one chicken breast fillet, which is still wrapped in tin foil. (The mince packets were also totally wrapped, at first - read on..)

It felt silly to BBQ just two chicken breast fillets, so I decided to make some beef mince packets as well;

Beef mince BBQ packets
(enough for ONE packet - multiply as necessary)
chopped half an onion
crushed fresh garlic (as much as you like)
sliced half a mystery chili pepper
about 100g beef mince
soy sauce
sea salt
spicy Herbamare
black pepper
white pepper

I started with the folded tin foil (like with those chicken breast fillets), and just piled up stuff in that order (see the list of ingredients, above), finally wrapping it tightly. As I hadn't done anything to the mince, other than spooned it out of its original container, I applied some pressure on the wrapped packet, to make it a bit "burgery". That's totally optional.. =P

Once my BBQ charcoal was ready, I placed all the packets on the grill, and the lid went on. After maybe 5-8 minutes, I turned all packets upside down.. After maybe another 5-8 minutes, I unwrapped the top of the mince packets, to get the actual BBQ flavour..

    
I cut into one "burger", to make sure it was done, and it was. So, I decided to have the mince packets for lunch, and keep the chicken for later. However, before I started eating those mince packets, I unwrapped the chicken;


I placed the fillets back on the BBQ, without the tin foil wrapping - you can see leftovers of the marinade, in the unwrapped packets, above..

I ate the first mince packet (well, not the tin foil, heh..), and it was really, really nice.. The onion was also perfect to my taste, I loved the soft fresh garlic, which had soaked in meaty juices, and the mystery chili pepper turned out to be quite hot, mmmmm..

After the first packet, I turned the chicken breast fillets, and then ate the second mince packet. After that, the chicken fillets were done.


As I mentioned, I was planning to keep the chicken fillets for later, but I was curious about the marinade, so I thought I'd try some of the smaller fillet..

I kind of ended up eating the whole fillet.. =D

It was Really Good..

I had the other fillet later that night - I cut it in bite-size pieces, nuked it for a minute, nuked a tortilla wrap, filled it with the chicken fillet, and slapped some mayonnaise on it.. Mmmmmm.. Very Nice BBQ chicken tortilla wrap..

It had been such a long time, that I'd forgotten how quick and easy it actually is, to BBQ stuff.. OK, you have to wait for that 30 minutes or so (unless you have a gas version, I guess?), but the actual cooking part is pretty effortless, and the food is so nice..