Meaty Monday: Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze

I have eaten too much this weekend. BBQ food, desserts, and some grazing, since its just been too hot to eat. Monday, for me, is the day I have to rein it all in, but by the time I get home, starvation is nearly setting in and I need to have something in the works that will be good and satisfying. Without turning dinner into an eating free-for-all. By tossing some chicken parts into this Asian-flavored brine before you head off to work, you can have a good chicken dinner on the table in well less than an hour. Your ace in the hole is a Chinese 5-spice powder. It packs a flavor punch with just about no work on your part. You can even make the brine before you've had your morning coffee. It's that simple. The light honey glaze amps up the flavor, but isn't thick or gloppy.  It'll be delicious, nutritious, and  your tastebuds will think you're blowing your diet. But you haven't. Yet. As long as you can skip dessert... Oh, and as per usual, these leftovers are divine!

Note: I highly recommend bone-in, skin on chicken parts for this dish, and then just removing the skin before glazing the chicken at the end. Keeping the skin on while baking will help keep the meat moist and juicy. If you can afford the extra calories, then just leave the skin in place; it add a lot of flavor to the finished dish. Also, if the only chicken breasts you can find with the skin and bone, are large, just cut them in half, straight across the middle with a poultry shears, a sturdy chef's knife or kitchen scissors.

 Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze,
but the half lime went in my tea...oops!

Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze
4 servings

For the brine:
8 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs or small chicken breasts
5 cups water
4 Tablespoons Morton's Kosher Salt
2 Tablespoons Chinese Five Spice Powder
2 Tablespoons sugar

For the glaze:
1/3 cup mild honey
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
juice of 1/2 small lime
4 Tablespoons gluten free Tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon powdered ginger

Garnish:
The other half of the lime in small wedges

1. Place the chicken in a large zip top bag. Mix the brine ingredients, stirring until the salt is dissolved, and then pour it over the chicken in the bag. Place the bag in a dish in case it leaks, and then into the fridge for 8 to 12 hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Remove the chicken from the brine and place, skin side up in a shallow metal roasting pan, and bake about 40 to 45 minutes until the temperature of the thigh meat is 160ºF. Mix the glaze ingredients and set aside.

3. Remove the pan from the oven, turn each chicken piece bottom up, and brush with about half of the glaze. Turn the oven to broil and broil the chicken for a minute or two until the glaze begins to bubble. Carefully turn the chicken, and remove the skin if you wish, or leave in place and then brush with the remaining glaze. Broil until browned and bubbly, about 2-3 minutes longer.  Serve garnished with Lime if desired.

Look Ma, No Added Sugar: Mild Chile-Lime BBQ Sauce

This Chile-Lime BBQ Sauce is good on anything. Really.

Until recently, the house pulled pork wasn’t traditional BBQ. It was really a delicious pork shoulder, braised in BBQ sauce until it fell apart. Good, but in my book, not the real thing. I had made quite a few in my BBQ pit prior to marrying Chuck. But a smoky shoulder, unadorned, wasn't his favorite.  So I just stuck to my briskets, turkey breasts, bacon, ribs and chickens and left the pork shoulder with Chuck, in the house, in the oven, simmering away under a blanket of BBQ sauce. I prefer the long-smoked kind because it features the smoked pork as the main flavor, with the BBQ sauce as a condiment. With the braised kind, it depends totally on how good the sauce is; the pork itself is only secondary.

So, imagine my surprise, when he says he wants to make a pork shoulder in the Big Green Egg. I was so happy I’d have run to the store, barefoot, to buy one. It’s been cooking all day, at a nice solid 250ºF. Not one refill of charcoal needed, in the Egg, either. Totally amazing. I’d have been practically chained to the old pit for a long cook like this to keep it steadily fueled. 

Today I ran  errands, did some pickling, and even made a really good, naturally sugar-free BBQ sauce to have with our real pulled pork sandwiches tonight. 
BBQ sauce is a condiment;  but when you use a lot of it, it becomes for some people, a food group, like vegetables. That’s all well and good, if, like ketchup, it wasn’t full of sugar, or worse, high fructose corn syrup. Plus, they are usually so darn syrupy sweet. I've fixed all that in this recipe though. While I made this intending it to be used on a BBQ'd pulled pork sandwich, its perfect as the braising sauce for pork, too. 

Mild Chile-Lime is a spunky sauce. Not so much heat, though as spunk; kids like it too. There is enough here to braise a pork shoulder (or chops, chicken, etc.)This one isn’t loaded with chiles, but it has a little spice, and a decent punch of lime. It also has natural erythritol and stevia as the sweetener, and a single tablespoon of blackstrap molasses in it for the deep, rich, brown sugar flavor. It’s lower in carbs, diabetic friendly, as a condiment and if you use an anchovy-free Worcestershire sauce, it’ll be vegetarian, too. This recipe makes a lot, about 3-1/2 cups, enough to serve with a whole pulled BBQ pork shoulder. I can, and have eaten this Mild Chile-Lime BBQ sauce with a spoon. It’s that good.

Note: You can substitute 1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons of Spoonable Truvia or Z-Sweet for the erythritol and stevia. Add the optional jalapeño, if you like a serious tingle in you BBQ sauce.

Mild Chile-Lime BBQ Sauce (No Added Sugar)

Ingredients:

1 29 oz. can tomato puree
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1T blackstrap molasses
1/2 cup granular erythritol
1/8 tsp. powdered stevia extract
1 tsp. garlic powder
3T minced dried onions
2 T prepared yellow mustard
1T Worcestershire sauce
2T mild chili powder
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
pinch of ground cloves
2 tsp. Cholula chile sauce
1 tsp. ancho chile powder
1 lime, halved
Optional: 1 small red jalapeño, left whole

Instructions:

In a large saucepan, whisk everything through the ancho chile powder together until well blended.  Squeeze in the lime juice, and drop in the two halves. Add the jalapeño, if using. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and then lower to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally until the sauce is thick enough to coat a spoon, about  20 minutes. Cover and turn the heat to the lowest possible temperature and let set on the heat for another 15 minutes. remove and discard the lime halves and jalapeño before serving. Makes a scant quart.

Grainless Wonder: Lime Coconut Cupcakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

Put the Lime in the Coconut and eat them all up.

Coconut Lime Cupcakes. She put the lime in the coconut...I was so enamored of the cake Chuck made for me for my birthday, that I just had to try another version, using white beans. Honestly, if I didn't tell you they were made with beans, stevia and erythritol, you'd never know. Coconut and lime seem summery to me, and I also had the ingredients on hand. Noting having to run to the store is key for me. 

♫ Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime

His sister had another one, she paid it for a lime.

She put the lime in the coconut, she drank them both up...♫

Every time I say the name of these cupcakes, I want to start singing the Harry Nilsson version of this song. Fortunately, this cupcake recipe will not give anyone a bellyache ( like the song says) because it is grain free, gluten free and sugar free. It's also pretty low carb, too, by my calculations, less than 6g per cupcake. Your calculation may differ.



No coconut shreds in them, but they do have excellent coconut flavor, ideally use the Frontier coconut flavoring; but real coconut extract will do. Coconut flour and coconut oil really up the flavor ante. The lime keeps them from being too sweet. You can buy the Boyajian Lime oil here, or over at Amazon, and in some good baking stores. You can leave it out if you want, but I'd double up on the zest if you do. I started out with a recipe I found called Healthy Yellow Cupcakes over on the blog Healthy Indulgences, and ran with it. They're topped with a decadent cream cheese frosting pumped up with some lime zest, lime juice and lime oil. I've used navy beans, as they have the least beany flavor, which totally disappears after the cakes stand for about 8 hours. Keep the frosted cupcakes refrigerated. We ate our first cupcakes after about 5 hours and noticed no bean taste at all. Just deliciousness.

Almost eaten all up.

Adapted from Healthy Indulgences

Coconut Lime Cupcakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

1 15 oz. can of navy beans, drained

6 large eggs

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

3/4 teaspoon pure stevia extract

2/3 cup granular erythritol

2 tsp. natural vanilla extract

2 tsp. Frontier alcohol-free Coconut Flavoring

1/2 tsp. Boyajian Lime oil

6 packed tablespoons of coconut flour

2 T lime zest

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. aluminum-free baking powder.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place 12 cupcake papers into a  cupcake pan, and spray the inside of the papers with cooking spray. Set aside. In a blender container or a food processor, place the beans, and all the ingredients through the lime oil. In a small bowl, mix the coconut flour, the lime zest the salt, the baking soda, and the baking powder. Set aside. Puree or process until perfectly smooth, scraping down the container as necessary. Add the coconut flour mixture and blend or process until mixed in completely. Fill the 12 prepared cupcake cups with the batter, place in the oven, and bake about 20-25 minutes until they are beginning to brown at the edges. Let stand on a rack about 10 minutes, then carefully remove the cupcakes from the pan and let cool completely on a rack before frosting. 

Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8oz. package of cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted

1/2 cup granular erythritol

1/8 teaspoon pure stevia extract

1/2 tsp. Boyajian Lime oil

3 T lime zest

2T fresh lime juice

Pinch of sea salt

With a hand mixer, beat everything together in a medium size bowl, beat about 3-4 minutes until the erythritol dissolves and is no longer grainy. Frost cupcakes as desired. Make enough frosting for 12 cupcakes.