course kosher salt

Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac

March 26, 2017 by Dana

Grab your tortilla chips and get prepared for some fresh guacamole and perfectly grilled chicken! This Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac does not disappoint in the flavor department and takes only a few minutes to prepare. Weeknight grilling for the win!

Truth: I’m trying to fit more fruits, veggies, healthy fats, and lean protein into my diet. All winter I wasn’t taking into consideration what I was eating, and I found myself mostly snacking on carbs all day. In my Balsamic Glazed Grilled Chicken recipe, I discussed prepping meals ahead of time to try to balance my diet a bit more. So far it is working great, except when my husband comes home and eats all of the portions I made in advance. Meal prep fail! His job is super labor intensive, so I guess he gets a pass to go on this one. 🙂

Cilantro is super popular, but I feel it is so underrated! Every time I purchase a bunch of cilantro at the grocery store I:

Immediately smell it 1,000 times
Make a gorgeous salad with a cilantro lime dressing
Make fresh guac, of course
Start putting it on everything until it goes bad

But for real, this Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac is one of my favorite uses for it. You just can’t beat a perfectly grilled piece of chicken, seasoned to perfection, bursting with bold flavors, and perfect for leftovers! I mentioned meal prepping earlier and this chicken made awesome salads the rest of the week for me. I tossed it with some dark leafy greens, a few tortilla chips as croutons, fresh avocado, cherry tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and my favorite ranch dressing. Yum!

Grilling Tips

I have a few grilling tips I’ve repeated here about 1,000 times but here goes again! I suggest generously seasoning your meat with coarse kosher salt and black pepper beforehand. This is an important part of this recipe because bland chicken is no good! Next, I would suggest using thin cut chicken breasts, or filleting and pounding your chicken breasts flat with a meat tenderizer. This also makes a huge difference in how your chicken grills, and eliminates that super fat part that contributes to uneven grilling and a bland end product.

Meal Prep: Balsamic Glazed Grilled Chicken

March 21, 2017 by Dana

Happy first day of Spring! My heart is happy!

What better way to welcome the first day of spring then to do some healthy meal prep with this Balsamic Glazed Grilled Chicken! This is an easy, simple, and delicious way to not complicate eating healthy. With just a few ingredients you can have meals for the week, which means plenty of time to get outside and enjoy the Spring weather!

Truth: Everyone can meal prep. EVERYONE. You don’t need to be a super healthy, fitness guru to meal prep. You can be a Mommy like me who is tired of eating your children’s leftovers for lunch. You could also be a working 20-something who is sick and tired of spending so much money on eating out. Or a middle aged man who takes lunch to the office. There are a million scenarios here, and the bottom line is everyone can meal prep to make their lives easier.

For me personally, I need structure to my eating habits to maintain my healthy eating goals. If I have an open-ended day with no plan, sure enough I find myself snacking on everything in sight. I’m not “dieting,” rather I’m just trying to find a nice balance between foods I really love, and foods I should be eating more of.

Should be eating more of = greens, lean protein, fruits

Foods I love = Mac n cheese, cheese fries, cheeseburgers, anything with sugar

See how this could turn into a serious problem!?! Creating a balance for me is just making plans, like this Balsamic Glazed Grilled Chicken. It took me less than 45 minutes from start to finish. 45 minutes! Now I have lunch for the rest of the week. That means no reaching snacks to fill me up. I am armed and ready with a plan of filling half of my plate with these beautiful greens and fruit, and the other with a protein.

LunchBots for Storing Meals

I mentioned on my Planetbox vs. LunchBots review that I love these little boxes! What I love the most is that they are not plastic. Secondly, they are super easy to load your food in, and stack up in the refrigerator to store without taking up a ton of space. For this meal I would suggest using the uno or duo. I used both and they worked like a charm! Amazon has a nice variety of their products, so here is the link to the uno that I used. For a larger portion, they also have their Bento line, which is fabulous too! If you don’t have any reservations about plastics, there are also a ton of meal prep containers on Amazon that work just like the LunchBots.

Products from Amazon.com

The Recipe

The best part of this recipe by far is the balsamic glaze! It is simply just balsamic vinegar and a bit of sugar reduced to a thick glaze. This takes about 15 minutes and will make your entire house smell like vinegar (warning). It is so good though, I didn’t even care!

When the chicken was just about done grilling, I brushed each piece with the glaze, then removed from the heat. The glaze will run off of the chicken when it is piping hot, but after it cooled a bit, I re-brushed with glaze to make sure it was nice and glaze-y.

Each container contains:

1 grilled chicken breast
2 cups dark leafy greens
1/2-1 cup strawberries/grapes
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
additional balsamic glaze for drizzling

If I were packing this to-go, I would use a LunchBots dips container for dressing or additional glaze.

Homestyle London Broil

March 2, 2017 by Dana

I used to get all kinds of annoyed when my husband would bring home a piece of meat from the grocery store labeled “London Broil.”

What. Do. I. Do. With. This. Thing. I went to pastry arts school, remember?

So I took a few different approaches as any aspiring chef wife would. I think it went something like marinating, grilling, ovening. Marinating it to death for 24 hours just praying this thing doesn’t die on me. Praying a second time that my husband stops buying these things because.. why!?!?! Just get a cut of meat I know what to do with already! Are there not a dozen other choices there?

Then, after the first epic fail, the unthinkable happens. My husband comes home with not one, but two London Broils. In my head I’m thinking, didn’t we realize we don’t like these things the first time? This time I thought maybe I would just put it in a crock pot and see what happens. What could really go wrong in a crock pot? Could it die again in there? Could I burn the house down? Will he stop this nonsense already and just bring home a chicken breast next time?

The moment of truth came at a friends house, because I had a photo shoot in the morning and was running so low on time that I threw the two London Broils in a crock pot with roast seasoning and carrots and hoped for the best. We showed up and I warned everyone I had no idea what was going to happen when I took the lid off of this thing. Everyone assured me that it would be fine, they would love me even if this was harder then a brick. My husband sliced a piece and to my surprise it was good!

Most recently, I got really brave and actually purchased one BY MYSELF at the grocery store. Literally I went to Giant and went directly to the meat section without passing go and picked myself up a brand new and shiny London Broil that I was going to go home and turn into a delicious dinner.

Seriously, who am I anymore!?!?!

When I Figured Out This Whole London Broil Thing

What I realized was that a London Broil was very similar to the cuts of meat they label as roasts or rump roasts. I noticed them to be a bit leaner, with a lot less marbling throughout and less fat on the outside as well. What I also noticed was that they are priced HALF THE PRICE of the roast cuts. Maybe my husband was on to something here?!?! They are almost always on sale. The London Broil I purchased was $7.00 and it was almost 3 lbs of meat. So winning when you have 4 kids!

I used my dutch oven that regularly collects dust inside my cabinet to make my Homestyle London Broil because I have a wonderful double burner on my gigantic stove so I figured, why not? It turned out to be the perfect way to cook my Homestyle London Broil because I was able to start it on the stove, browning both sides as well as my onions. Then slow cook it in the oven for a few hours, and to finish pop it right back on my double burner to make a delicious gravy out of the broth. I need to use this method more often because it was super easy!

Recipe Tips

I always say this when preparing meats but if you don’t have any course kosher salt in your life you need to get you some! It can take a just fine meal and make it so much better! I generously seasoned my London Broil with a mix of course kosher salt, cracked black pepper, onion salt, and granulated garlic. It is THAT EASY. Generously is the key word, do not be afraid to semi-coat your meat in the spices, just make sure you don’t over-do the onion salt due to the fact that you are using course kosher salt and beef stock as well.

All of those little bits and pieces and lovely brown color you get when cooking your onions is what I call flavor building. You can’t flavor build like this in a crock pot, that is why I didn’t just throw my ingredients in one. I would say you could totally use this recipe in a crock pot but the best way to do it would be exactly how the recipe says.

I just used a fork to pull apart my meat and it fell apart so easily. When making the gravy, I did not remove the meat. The stirring around helped pull apart the meat as well.

I did season to taste after everything was finished with just a pinch more salt and pepper. As with any recipe, if you feel it may be a tad bland, season to your own taste!

Products from Amazon.com

Grilled Greek Chicken

February 23, 2017 by Dana

Confession: It took me approximately 22 years to try feta cheese. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember my parents ever purchasing feta cheese, and I never even heard of it until the first time I tried it. Living under a big ol’ food rock, no?

The first time I tried it, I actually just tried a hunk of it plain. Like why?!?! Why didn’t I understand it needed to be paired with other delicious foods of either the salty or sweet caliber to live up to it’s full feta potential? Not a great first impression but thankfully it wasn’t my last.

Fast forward a bit, I started working at a Greek restaurant and quickly realized I needed to give feta cheese another chance. I have not looked back since! This Grilled Greek Chicken is a fabulous recipe that pairs feta with other savory, salty food to bring out how awesome it is! You take the salty feta, the perfectly seasoned chicken, and the crisp tomato to tone it down a bit and you have the perfect bite!

Speaking of crisp tomatoes, this Grilled Greek Chicken is such a versatile recipe in terms of how you can mix it up and make it your own! The first day I made the chicken I ate it with a ton of tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, salt, and feta cheese. The weather here has been super warm here, so getting out and grilling and eating a light and refreshing side made me dream of the summer nights that are just around the corner. The next day I used the same chicken in a Greek salad. It was the perfect protein to throw onto a bed of greens, add a few croutons, tomatoes, and dressing and have a quick and easy lunch.

Meal preppers.. This is a great one for you!

Grilling The Chicken

I know this sounds so much like a cooking 101 class but the first step to this recipe is preparing the chicken the right way. I’ve given everyone this run down over and over again, however I know I get new traffic from Pinterest every single day. So hello new readers and listen up… preparing your chicken correctly is the key to every chicken recipe! 🙂

I’ve talked extensively about this on my Fiesta Grilled Chicken recipe but here I go again because I’m super passionate about helping people understand how to cook delicious food at home! If your chicken breasts are super thick, you will want to filet them (cut them lengthwise in half). Your knife skills do not have to be perfect to do this and rest assured, some of my chicken breasts look very butchered up when I do it too! Just keep practicing!

After you filet your breasts you will want to pound flat any super thick parts with a meat tenderizer. This ensures that every bite will be seasoned correctly and your chicken will grill evenly! There is nothing I hate more then biting into thick chicken that tastes bland. This will solve that problem! Simply place a piece of plastic over your chicken breast and pound. I like to this it is stress therapy and cooking all in one! haha

The next step. Course. Kosher. Salt. I’ve also talked about this ingredient extensively, but again, it is important so I’m saying it again. When seasoning meat I always use course kosher salt. You certainly don’t have to go overboard because it is strong and totally possible to over season but it can take a piece of chicken from zero to hero in just a pinch!

I have a $100 grill from Amazon.So by all means it is nothing fancy but it gets the job done. I put one side on medium, and one size on low. I start each piece on the hotter side, get nice grill marks by moving each piece after a few minutes, then I flip the chicken breast to the lower side to finish it.

Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos

February 19, 2017 by Dana

Tacos are a family favorite here, and these Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos did not disappoint! They are so quick to put together, and a perfect meal for any night of the week.

One quick thing to point out about life in general. Target now has organic flour tortillas and that means my life is basically complete. For years (I’m not kidding) I’ve been looking for a store bought flour tortilla that did not contain hydrogenated oils, also known as trans fats. I was able to find ONE product at Giant that did not. ONE. They are good, but I like options!

Now there are two! So I can now go to Target, get a latte from Starbucks, buy diapers, groceries, and tortillas all in one place. Yeeessss. 🙂

Not only did I find flour tortillas that checked out in the ingredient department, I also found a huge bin of Avocados From Mexico right next to the tortilla section. In the bin I found the perfectly ripened avocado. Not too mushy, not too firm, but right in between. It sliced so perfectly for these Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos. The best part… I wasn’t even there for tortillas or avocados!! haha In fact, I don’t even know what I was there for!

Only. At. Target.

In my Fiesta Grilled Chicken recipe I shared a spice mix that I use for grilled meats for tacos, burritos, quesadillas, etc. This recipe is exactly like that one, in that I just use a few spices and I’m done! No packets for seasoning, or out of the ordinary ingredients. I love these simple recipes and my family does too!

Speaking of packets… a friend was just over at my house the other day and mentioned that she has always wanted to make her own taco seasoning mix but she just didn’t know what to use. I got mine off of the back of a can of beans one day. I have honestly not picked up a packet since then. It is so simple! You can totally play around with ratios of course,and add in other ingredients as you taste test and figure out what you like the best. Per pound of ground beef I use:

2 Tablespoons chili powder
2 Tablespoons cumin
2 teaspoons adobo seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

The adobo seasoning does contain sodium, so I do go light on the salt. This recipe is similar, I’m just using steak instead of ground beef. Those 3 spices are the best together and are a great foundation for making your own taco seasoning. I’m sure I’ll be posting a ton of other recipes using them since my kids love this stuff and so do I!

Shrimp & Parmesan Strip Steak

February 14, 2017 by Dana

Last minute Valentine’s Day dinner alert! This Shrimp & Parmesan Strip Steak is restaurant quality food at home and so easy. Pair it with some simple mashed potatoes and wine and you will never miss the hustle and bustle of going out to eat!

So my Valentine and I (my husband!!) don’t get to go out to eat all too often because we have 4 kids and it is just too much of a hassle. I would much rather have a special dinner at home with the kids and save the stress of getting a babysitter, having our youngest cry the ENTIRE time the sitter is here, and waiting for an hour for a table at a crowded restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, time away is wonderful, refreshing, and a must for parents. However today I want to show my whole family I love them instead of just my husband. So we are staying home. 🙂 Welcome this Shrimp & Parmesan Strip Steak!

Seasoning the Steak

This recipe starts with a standard grilled strip steak. You can totally substitute any cut of steak you’d like! My only recommendation would be to stay away from any thin cuts. I used strip steaks because while on the phone at the grocery store and not really paying attention I just put something that looked decent in the cart. When I got home my husband immediately asked:

“What kind of steak is that?” Such a man question!

Hell if I know. Seriously. haha

So it was actually strip steak and it was perfect for this recipe!

When grilling steak I always use the same combo of spices and there is one key ingredient. COURSE kosher salt. When seasoning any cut of meat, this is what I use to really bump up the flavor. Along with the course kosher salt I used a really nice mix of granulated garlic, onion salt, and cracked black pepper. No need to get crazy when seasoning a steak!

Grilling the Steak

To be honest, this seems so simple. Yet both my husband and I have at different times totally messed it up! Depending on who you ask about the best way to grill a steak, you may get different answers!

My answer would be (what works for me) is to put the grill on low to moderate heat on one side, and put the other side of the grill a bit hotter. Once I get nice grill marks and a bit of golden char around the outside, I flip it to the not as hot side and be patient. I like my steak at home to be medium well. It does take a bit of time to get that nice and golden brown, crispy around the edges steak. One time I Googled “tips for grilling steak” and what I found were a ton of pictures of rare steaks and suggestions that 3 minutes per side is about the time you’ll need.

So wrong for me!

Indeed I found that I needed quite a bit more time per side. I have never actually timed it. Once I start seeing char around the edges, I flip. I guess for me it is more of feeling and looking, than timing. After I have flipped my steak I go based upon feel to know when the steak is done. If you push on it and it is still springy, its not medium well. If you push on it and it is firm, its done. Don’t go too far though! Look and feel, look and feel. 🙂

Since I’m so bad at this whole giving directions to grill a steak… here… go check out what Bon Appetite says! haha

The shrimp part of the recipe is super easy. Put butter, salt, and white wine on top of pre-cooked shrimp and you are done! 🙂

I used frozen shrimp so I defrosted the shrimp in water first. Then I drained the water and added the butter, white wine, and salt.

To finish the dish, I simply put the shrimp on top of the grilled sirloin, and added my shaved parmesan/asiago blend that I bought pre-shaved at the grocery store. Next, I put it under the broiler for just long enough that the cheese was melted and starting to brown.