
BBQ Chicken. It’s a pretty perfect food. The only food more perfect than BBQ chicken may be fried chicken. And I don’t have that perfected yet. But it will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.
Where was I? Oh yes, the virtues of BBQ chicken! You can serve it at a dinner, a lunch, a picnic, or anything, and if you do it right, it makes great leftovers. Don’t be that chef who cooks the chicken over a hot grill, ending with the outside burned and the inside raw. You’re better than that! Here’s my version.
Ingredients
Chicken
4 Chicken Thighs with Skin (my favorite, but use the pieces you like)(I put 4 here, but choose your number folks. Leftovers are always good!)
Seasoned Salt
¼ cup Balsamic Vinegar
Balsamic Glaze
½ cup Balsamic Vinegar
⅔ cup Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
½ tsp Salt
Directions
Season chicken liberally on both sides with Seasoned Salt. Sprinkle balsamic vinegar on them and place in plastic bags for 1 to 8 hours.
I use a reverse sear process here. I put them on the Big Green Egg at 300 degrees or so first. I use some apple wood with that. You could use indirect heat on a grill, or you could do this part in the oven. (See note below). Flip over every 10 minutes or so. Cook until they are done – 175 degrees for thighs; 165 for breasts. Cooking the dark meat a little more is fine, but you have to be pretty exact with white meat. Remove the chicken when it hits the right temp and cover tightly with foil until ready to sear. You can hold it here for at least an hour – for safety reasons, don’t let the chicken temperature dip below 140.
Note: Indirect Heat is the key to good BBQ. Big Green Egg people put a “platesetter” over the coals to turn the BGE into an oven. Traeger people flip a switch. If you have a gas grill, you can turn on the burners on one side of the grill, close the lid and let the oven heat up, then use the side of the grill where the burners are off. Real outdoor chefs use indirect heat!

While the chicken is indirect cooking, prepare the glaze. Add all ingredients in a sauce pan, whisk together and simmer for 10 minutes. It will thicken. Do this while the chicken is cooking.

Using direct heat, heat up your grill to a high temperature. Apply oil to the grill grates. You can spray it or wipe it with a paper towel dipped in canola oil and held by tongs. Move the chicken to the hot grill, basting with the glaze and flipping every two minutes until it looks perfect. A little flame is not going to hurt you! You’ll have a nice beautiful charred glaze on there and be ready to serve!


Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives loves a good burger, and so do we! His favorite burger is the Pastrami Burger from a place called Hodad’s in San Diego. Mike Hardin , who ran the place until he recently passed away, had a tatoo of Guy on his thigh. I’m not going to do that. But I’m still a fan, and we will go there one day, have this burger and meet his son who’s now running the place. In the meantime, it’s a good day when pastrami cheeseburgers are happening in my house.
One of the keys to recipes is the amount of mustard you put on the bottom bun of each burger. It’s a lot! But when I was serving these up to my son Ryan and his friends, his friend Dusty said, “Mike. I now know what you’re superpower is. It’s mustard. Nobody else knows the right amount of mustard like you do.” So I got that going for me. Which is nice.
Ingredients
¼ lb hamburger per person. 85/15 is the leanest you should go.I usually make 1/3 pound burgers, but there's so much pastrami, a thin patty works out great.
¼ lb Beef Pastrami, per person. Thinly sliced from your favorite deli. Get more than this, and make some great sandwiches this week.
1 Slice cheese per person, swiss is nice here, but choose your own.
½ Onion, sliced, per person
1 Soft Hamburger Bun, per person. Brioche buns are hot right now, but find a good one.
Mustard, Yellow, Dijon, Spice – the one you like the most with pastrami or a burger.
Ketchup
Soy Sauce
Montreal Steak Seasoning
Directions
Season burgers like you season steaks. Soy sauce and Montreal Steak Seasoning.

Slice onion thinly and saute in olive oil until nice and browned. Take them out and set aside.

Grill the burger to your satisfaction. I’m a medium well to well done burger guy. Please don’t judge. I like the outdoor bbq grill more, but you can use a griddle or cast iron skillet indoors. That’s how Hodad’s does it.
Just before the burger is done, heat the thinly sliced pastrami. I do this in the cast iron skillet with a tiny bit of oil.
Add cheese to the burger, close the lid, and let it melt for no more than 1 minute.
Assembling the burger
Start with the bottom half of the bun. Put twice as much mustard as you usually put on a burger. Twice. May be 2 and a half times. Go big.
Put the burger with cheese on the mustard-laden bottom bun. Add enough pastrami to make a decent-sized pastrami sandwich. Not a NY Deli sized pastrami sandwich, but enough to be good by itself.
Add the grilled onions. This is a big burger!

Put a normal sized amount of ketchup on top, place the bun, slice in half if you want, and you are ready to go!
