Big Green Egg: "Baked" Chicken Fajitas

Yum!  I could live on Mexican food so it's no surprise that the "baked" fajitas we made tonight are my favorite Big Green Egg recipe.

The recipe is a mish-mosh of the baked fajita recipes floating around and a fajita marinade that we've used for a while now.  Pictures and recipe follow...

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First mix up all of the dry spices, then add the liquid ingredients.

Slice a red bell pepper, onion and some chicken cutlets.  Pour the sauce over the top, mix everything up so the chicken and veggies are coated in the flavorful marinade.  Pop the mix in the fridge for an hour or so.

Transfer the mix to your seasoned cast iron skillet.

Put the skillet on the egg and maintain a temp between 350 and 375 degrees.  "Bake" for 45 minutes.

When you remove your delicious fajita mix from the BGE, you'll notice that the veggies have cooked down a lot which makes them super tender and amazing.

Heat up some tortillas and pull together a few fresh ingredients to round out the fajitas.  Tonight, we just did shredded cheese and sour cream.  I strongly recommend a sliced avocado or some homemade guacamole.  Assemble everything and enjoy!

Big Green Egg "Baked" Chicken Fajitas
serves 4 or 2 with leftovers

Ingredients:

• 1 lb Chicken cutlets
• 1 Red Bell Pepper
• 1 Onion
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup apple cider or white vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (update: I'll add half of the soy sauce next time, leftovers were super salty)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp chili powder (I used regular but you could use hot to spice it up)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 cup cheese
• sour cream
• any other toppings you like (think avocado or guac)

Recipe:

1. Mix together the dry seasonings and spices
2. Add in the olive oil, soy sauce & lemon juice and whisk everything together and set aside
3. Slice the chicken cutlets, bell pepper and onion into 1/2" slices.
4. Put the sliced ingredients into a baking dish or a ziplock bag and pour the sauce over the top.  Make sure everything gets a nice coat of sauce.
5. Enjoy how delicious this smells :)
6. Put the mix into the fridge for an hour or so to start soaking up the yumminess
7. Heat the egg to 350 degrees.
8. Transfer your chicken, veggies and sauce to a cast iron skillet and place the skillet on the egg.
9. Maintain a temp of 350-375 and cook everything up for 45 minutes.
10. Shred your cheese, toast/heat your tortillas and prep all of your other ingredients.
11. Remove your fajita mix from the egg and start assembling.  It will smell so amazing so definitely plan to eat right away.

Mmmmmmm.... so goooooood!

Big Green Egg: Cream Cheese, Spinach and Apple Cranberry Chutney Stuffed Pork Loin

Okay, this was soooo good.  We would do a couple things differently next time, but we could have served this to company.

Let's start with a few pictures -

Ingredients:

• 3-4lb Pork Loin (we used tenderloin this time because I didn't know the difference when purchasing.  Oops.)
• 1 8oz block of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
• 1 cup of fresh spinach
• 4 Tbs of Apple Cranberry Chutney (I like Stonewall Kitchen's and found it at Coastal Cupboard)

Directions:

1. Heat the egg to 350°.  We added a couple pieces of apple wood tonight.
2. Roll cut the pork loin.  This video has a very good demonstration if you want to see what this technique looks like.
3. Spread the cream cheese across the meat.  You could also add a little goat cheese or replace the cream cheese with goat cheese completely.
4. Spread or dot the chutney over the cream cheese.  Use whatever kind of chutney you love.
5. Top the spread with a layer of clean, dry spinach leaves.
6. Roll the loin and tie it with string.
7. Place the loin on the egg and cook it to an internal temp of 140° then remove it and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before slicing.

Tips for next time:

• Pork loin and pork tenderloin are not the same thing. Buy the pork loin.
• Consider adding an herb rub on the outside - it could have used a little something.

Big Green Egg: Boston Butt

Well, it's official.  We've joined The Big Green Egg groupie cult and there is no going back!

Cooking on the egg has already proven to be an art, so I thought I'd track our experiences in hopes that it will help us improve and also help others new to The Egg.

Today, we cooked our first BGE Boston butt.  Here are the steps that we followed.

Night Before:

• Made the rub (recipe adapted from Paula Deen's BBQ Pork Sandwich) by mixing together; 2 tablespoons salt, 2 tablespoons pepper, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 2 tablespoons paprika, 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper, 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

• Covered the pork shoulder with this mixture then wrapped it in plastic wrap and refrigerated overnight

• Completely cleaned out the egg removing any leftover ash

• Added fresh natural lump charcoal up to the top of the firebox (could have done this in the morning instead)

• Placed 2 hickory wood chunks in water to soak overnight

Day of:

• At 6:00am - lit the charcoal and began to heat the egg up to 250°

• Around 7:00am - injected the butt with a 1 1/2 ounce equal part mixture of apple cider vinegar and apple juice, then inserted the thermometer

• At 7:30am (when the egg had heated up and the starter had completely burned off), we put the butt on the egg

Then, we waited, and waited, and waited...

At 12pm, the internal temp was up to 140°. Pork is considered cooked at 170°, but for falling-apart pulled pork, you want to shoot for 195°-200°.

By 8:30pm, the temperature had reached 185°. We thought we would have eaten an hour earlier. We also wanted to try out the Foil, Towel, Cooler technique (also known as FTC), but decided that we would try that next time around.

• 9:45pm - we finally pulled the butt off the egg, once it reached 195°. Under most circumstances, we would have at minimum let the meat rest to redistribute the juices, but it was 9:45 (past our bedtime), so we pulled out the bone and pulled it apart.

Conclusion: Excellent.  We made sandwiches on Publix bakery hamburger buns.

What we will do differently with our Boston Butt next time:

• Cook it overnight. It took a good 13+ hours for it to finish cooking. If you want to eat at a reasonable hour, don't cook it the same day.
• Try the FTC technique. If we can't do that, let it rest for at least 15 minutes before pulling it apart.
• Consider wrapping it in foil once it reaches about 160°.
• Consider reducing the cayenne pepper and adding another spice for additional flavor with less heat. Only the skin was spicy, but it was pretty spicy.
• Pickles