Guest Blogger Today

My son who is in college wanted to be a guest blogger, representing a few recipes that the college folks could use.  You know the ones who are working with limited resources and a closet size kitchen.  Not like Mom’s kitchen. 🙂

Needless to say I was over the moon that he wanted to participate.  He does have an amazing brand-new Whole Foods to shop from so he is not completely powerless to get some good food, but sometimes it is just nice to cook your own food and stay in!

Here is his first recipe he sent me last night!

Since yesterday April 16^th was such a beautiful day in DC my friends and I decided to have a little grill out.  The problem that we have living in a dorm room is the limited space and amenities we have for resources.  We have been working together to come up with solutions to cook meals we all enjoy.

With the absence of a deck and outdoor grill, we tried out the little simple George Foreman press grill. 

Which is the size of a Panini press.   The grill is perfect because all you have to do is plug it into the wall and wait for the light to go off so you know when it’s nice and hot.  

We decided to try two different techniques for cooking up some BBQ chicken sandwiches.  We decided to pare our sandwiches with potato salad.  I bought the potato salad from my grocery store but I asked them for the recipe.  (It is listed below)

For our chicken sandwiches I bought 6 chicken breasts, a jar or ‘Stubbs’ BBQ sauce, 6 buns, and freshly sliced provolone.  

We wanted to cook the chicken two different ways to see which we preferred.

  For our first batch we put them into a baking pan and covered them in BBQ sauce and baked them at 250 degrees for around 15 minutes (basically the time that it took us to cook  and plate up the other breasts).  We wanted the these chicken breasts to soak up the Sauce.

For the other three breasts, we only grilled them and just put the BBQ sauce to our sandwich buns (like you would ketchup), topping each breast with a slice of provolone for the final touch.   

While we ate our first sandwich’s we threw the chicken breasts that had baked in the oven onto the grill.   The cooking time on the grill was much shorter since we had baked the chicken first, grilling for about 6 minutes. 

The two different batches had completely different tastes.  

The only grilled batch had a cleaner saucy taste without the grill taste we were looking for. 

The baked and grilled batch had your traditional BBQ grill taste. 

Both were great so I listed each style for people’s preferences.  As we were grilling away we thought since the chicken breasts were so large, it would make it easier to eat if we cut each breast in half .  Kind of like a slider portion.  And it did!

The whole process of cooking the chicken took about 20 minutes and we had enough for 3 college guys. 

Not to bad for three hungry guys, and a tiny kitchen! 

  Here is the Potato Salad Recipe:

Ingredients

         4 potatoes

         4 eggs

         1/2 stalk celery, chopped

         1/4 cup sweet relish

         1 clove garlic, minced

         2 tablespoons prepared mustard

         1/2 cup mayonnaise

         Salt and pepper to taste 

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add potatoes and cook until tender but still firm, about 15 minutes; drain and chop.

Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring water to a boil; cover, remove from heat, and let eggs stand in hot water for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from hot water; peel and chop.

In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, eggs, celery, sweet relish, garlic, mustard, mayonnaise and salt and pepper. Gently mix together and serve warm