Pinapple Grilled Chicken with Black Beans & Rice

ALLISON: Yes! It is our very first recipe post. Welcome to it.

Tonight on the menu, Pineapple Grilled Chicken with Black Beans & Rice. Look at that. Holy balls that looks awesome, amirite? Well, it was a little time intensive, but super worth it. Lately, Rick has been on a kick of rediscovering his "food roots" and really diving into the dishes of his Puerto Rican upbringing. He's been making some ridiculously good beans and rice, so I thought we should pair that up with some pretty chickens. (I like to pluralize chicken)

Your Ingredients:
1 8oz Chicken Breast
1/2 cup Pineapple Juice
5 pineapple rings
1 tbs. Honey Mustard
1 tbs. chopped rosemary
1 tbs. chopped fresh oregano
5 or 6 cloves of garlic
1 cup brown rice
1/2 cup dry black beans
1 bell pepper
1/2 tsp. olive oil
1 jalepeno
1/2 onion
3 bay leaves
1/4 can tomato paste
as much water as you cook rice and beans with
salt & pepper, of course

So what makes this so time-intensive? Dried beans. Yeah yeah yeah... from a can is so much easier.. but dried are so much more rewarding! Also, not full of sodium! So pretty much, you're going to have to soak those puppies overnight. Nothing to it, just soak in some cold water.

While you're getting that ready, making a marinade is easy enough. We used a combo of pineapple juice, oregano, rosemary, garlic, and honey mustard. Yes, it looked like vomit. I know that's not supposed to be appetizing.. but it smelled most unlike vomit, and quite delicious.
Yeahh... soak those chickens. I actually only used one breast, which we butterflied later. It cuts down on the calories, and really, a whole chicken breast is about 8 grams, when 1 serving is only 4 grams. So 1 breast, 2 people. It should marinate for at least an hour, but we like the overnight thing. MOAR FLAVORZZZZ.

flavorz. i haz them.

So on to actual dinner time.



RICK: Very first thing you're going to want to do is get those beans started. Pour the murky, dark, Kraken-esque contents of the bean bowl into a strainer (there are times we'd want to save that water, this is not one of those times).

"Unleash the Kraken!"

The thing about these beans is that I'm trying to approximate Caribbean flavors - there's still a lot of specialized ingredients that I'm still on getting, so it's not 100% accurate. But it's a mighty fine approximation, and all with readily available ingredients.

While the beans drain, seed and de-vein the jalapeno and bell pepper and peel the onion and garlic. The garlic and jalapeno should be minced, but you'll want to slice the onion and bell pepper into thin strips.

Pour half a teaspoon of olive oil into a saucepan on medium heat. Once you have a little heat in the saucepan, sautee the vegetables with a half teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of dried oregano (or tablespoon if it's fresh) and salt and pepper to taste. Toss frequently to avoid burning the garlic - what you're looking for is for the onions to caramelize and the bell pepper to soften slightly. It should be about five minutes, but I advise eyeballing it.
You should really be able to get a good whiff of garlicky, oniony goodness at this point. You're probably also going to have a little black on the bottom of the saucepan. This is when you add 40z tomato sauce - essentially you're doing two things: deglazing the saucepan with the tomato sauce and making sure that the vegetables are all evenly coated with sauce. NOW you can finally add those beans. Toss in three bay leaves and stir well.
Add two cups of warm water, stirring as you pour. You want to be sure to A) cover the beans with water completely and B) blend everything well. Bring the beans to a boil, then simmer uncovered. Now remember, because these are dried rather than canned beans, they will need more time to cook through. Simmer at least forty minutes - though at forty minutes they'll still be rather firm. If you prefer a softer texture, like I do, then sixty minutes should be closer to your benchmark. At that point, they'll be fairly smooth and creamy and just beginning to fall apart.

Now's a good time to get the rice underway. It's gonna take a lot less time than the beans, but a lot more time than the chicken.

ALLISON: I like to call them CHICKENS.
RICK: But it's only one breast of chicken.

ALLISON: CHICKENZ!!

RICK: Plural?

ALLISON: I like plurals.
RICK: Um, yeah. So, the chicken/s is going to take a lot less time than the rice, so it's a good idea to get that underway while the beans are simmering. White or brown, whatever method you use, it's going to be between twenty and forty minutes, so it falls right in between. We prefer brown rice, and I'll get into that in detail in the next post. You want to take over, babe? You know, with the chicken/s?

Now, note that we said to use the pineapple juice. That's because when you make the marinade, you want to set the actual pineapple slices aside. We'll be grilling those before the chicken (CHICKENZ), to get them nice and caramelized AND we get some nice flavor charred onto the grill pan (or outdoor grill if it's not balls cold where you live).
Preheat that grill pan to a medium high, then hit it with cooking spray. Once the pan is nice and hot, you'll want to grill each side of the pineapples at least five minutes - basically watch for a good char. Take them off the grill, sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and set them aside.

CAREFULLY place each half of the chicken breast right on the same spot you grilled the pineapple - the grill will be hot and you WILL get some spatter. Since you butterflied that breast, it's going to be fairly thin, requiring only three minutes or so per side to cook through.

And that's it. You're done with the chicken, more or less. For best results, top the chicken with the pineapple slices, cover with foil and let the meat rest for five or ten minutes.

And there you have it folks... YUM.


Remember, this was our first post, so be gentle! :)

-R&A

Nutrition:

Serving Size 356 g

Amount Per Serving

Calories 680 Calories from Fat 59

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 6.5g 10%

Saturated Fat 1.6g 8%

Cholesterol 96mg 32%

Sodium 116mg 5%

Total Carbohydrates 102.6g 34%

Dietary Fiber 7.9g 31%

Sugars 7.2g

Protein 49.5g

Vitamin A 45% • Vitamin C 148% Calcium 11% • Iron 42%

Nutrition Grade A

* Based on a 2000 calorie diet