Entrée # 1: Southwestern BBQ Chicken Salad

For my first recipe I will be posting my family's version of the Southwestern BBQ Chicken Salad.  This recipe is very similar to what you can get in many restaurants; however, this can be made at a fraction of the price.  The recipe below feeds about 6 people, and you can adjust the portions to decrease or increase the output.

Ingredients

• 4 hearts of romaine lettuce
• 3 Roma tomatoes
• 1 large avocado
• 1 red onion
• 1 cup of shredded cheese (My grocery store sells a "Mexican Style" shredded cheese bag that is monterey jack, mild cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheese mixed which I like to use, but in lieu of this you can use cheddar or a another jack/cheddar mix and it works great) 
• 1 15-oz can of corn
• 1 15-oz  can of black beans
• 1.5 cup of ranch dressing
• 1 cup of tortilla strips for salads
• 2-3 chicken breasts (about 1.5 - 2lb)
• 1 tbsp of paprika
• 1 tbsp of garlic salt
• Pepper to taste
• 1 cup of BBQ sauce
 

 

 Preparation 

1. Trim the chicken breast and cut them into a few large pieces for grilling.
2. Season the chicken breast with the paprika, garlic salt, and pepper.
3. Grill the chicken breast until they are white on the inside and the juices run clear. 
4. While the chicken breasts cook, cut the romaine lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, and red onion into bite sized pieces and place in 1-2 large salad bowls.  If there is too much to put into one bowl, separate the ingredients evenly into 2 bowls.  I use 2 bowls because my children do not like the red onions so I hold the onions on theirs.
5.  Drain the black beans and corn and add these to the salad bowl(s).
6. Add the cheese to the salad bowls.
7. Once the chicken is grilled, cut the pieces of chicken into bite sized pieces. 
8.  Place the chicken into a bowl and add the BBQ sauce, mix the sauce and chicken breast pieces so that each piece of chicken is evenly coated.
9. From here, you can either chill the chicken or place it onto the salad while it is still hot.  I prefer to chill my chicken first, to do this I usually just place it in the fridge for about 5-10 minutes, this usually make the chicken warm to the touch, but not hot.
10.  Once the chicken is added, add the ranch dressing.
11. Mix the salad so that all ingredients are mixed evenly into the salad.
12. Serve and garnish with the tortilla strips.

Cutting the chicken into bite sized pieces.

Even BBQ sauce coating on the chicken.

Notes on grilling: Since I currently live in an apartment, I do not have access to a grill without having to run out to the park area.  So to grill my meats I use this handy grill pan that my wife bought me for my birthday a couple of years back.  It mimics the grill very closely and all of my food gets charred just right and the grill marks show up.  I LOVE grilling over a fire, but when I can't, the pan is a great substitute.  If you use a product like this and still miss the smoke taste, liquid smoke is available at most grocery stores. Just sprinkle some on the chicken while it cooks.  Be warned however, liquid smoke is very strong. Use sparingly at first until you find the best amount that works for you.

My grill pan

The Technical Stuff

So, since this is a salad, there isn't much cooking required and therefore isn't much to discuss regarding the cooking techniques.  However the grilling of the chicken is something we can discuss.

It turns out that grilling happens to be one of the oldest methods of cooking, dating all the way back to the times of homo erectus.  Ancient man would just toss their meats on hot coals and cook them this way, today we have a myriad of different methods we employ to grill our foods.  

The real interesting question here is why?  Why did early man begin cooking their food while every other predator on the planet eats their food raw?  It turns out that cooking allowed humans to become human.  The shear act of cooking meat allows for a few different benefits.  Cooking meat sort of per-digests the meat, so eating cooked meat vs. raw, the cooked meat is more easily consumed and digested, and since we don't have to constantly gnaw on raw meat, less calories are used allowing us to increase the net calories ingested.

How did this increase in calories and decrease in eating time help early man?  Well, the larger a brain requires more calories to support it, so this increase of calorie intake helped to enlarge and feed our calorie hungry brains.  In addition to the increased brain size, the fire pit that was used for cooking helped to provide warmth, which in turn gave our ancestors an area to gather, socialize, and create relationships and helped to allow us to shed the fur that covers our hairy cousins (other primates).

All in all, we owe our humanity to those first ancestors who decided that raw, sinewy meat sucks to eat and that they would rather have a nice grilled steak.

Conclusion

Thus concludes my first post for Engineering Entrees.  I hope you all enjoyed reading and really hope that some of you may have learned something new.  Feel free to comment if you have any suggestions or questions.

Sources

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/eating-cooked-food-made-us-human-study-finds

http://www.amazingribs.com/BBQ_articles/barbecue_defined.html