We're always game for a good ceremonial burning.
It’s taco Tuesday! Or any day! Who wouldn’t overuse exclamation points?! I loved taco night when I was a kid, when it meant yellow cheese, seasonings from a packet, and machine-molded tortilla shells—essentially, an insult to all of Mexico in one convenient box. It is, of course, better to make real tacos with sweet fresh flour tortillas.
This is the best method I know for making perfect roast chicken. Even novice cooks find it foolproof. By some mysterious chemistry (the discovery of Marcella Hazan) roasting a chicken with a lemon in its cavity guarantees exceptionally crisp skin, very moist flavorful flesh and abundant pan juices, with no added fat: in short everything one could ask of a roast chicken but which ordinarily achieved by slathering the bird with butter.
We're big fans of chicken thighs because they're very tasty and easy to prepare, and they have just enough fat to stay moist on the grill. This is a deliciously sweet, sticky, old-school treatment most often used with wings, but we like it even better with thighs. These are not only great hot off the grill, but when they're cold, too, making them perfect for picnics.
How many times have I made roast chicken over the years? Thousands.
Smoked chicken, served warm or cold, alongside sweet barbecue pit beans and the melon salad, is refreshing for any picnic, in your backyard or at the beach.
Ingredients
Every once and a while, my mother follows one of my recipes. Actually, "follows" is too exacting a word for what goes on. Let's just say, every once and a while, my mother decides to cook something of mine she's seen in the New York Times.
This is absolutely one of my fallback dishes for entertaining families when I don't know how finicky the kids' palates are. My kids usually eat the grown-up version but occasionally one of them has a relapse of sorts and declares the sauce (which he loved the week prior) to be unfit for human consumption. Suddenly the simplified version of chicken breasts and rice or potatoes with no sauce is all he will touch. This is exactly the kind of flexible option that doesn't make the cook (aka you) nuts and vaguely irritated since you will make one dish, just one, that allows the blander eaters to enjoy the meal without rendering the adults bored out of their skulls.
The Path to Avian Enlightenment: