2012 Cooking Club Week 31: Lime and chilli chicken burgers.

reallyrose

These burgers are adapted from a recipe for lime marinaded chicken on cookingforengineers.com. I've made them quite a few times so I like to think I have the recipe down at this stage! I'm one of those ad-hoc cooks so I'm not very good at measurements, so I apologise for any approximations.

They're really tasty burgers, very fresh and not too spicy. I'd imagine they would be great cooked on a barbecue.


Ingredients

sea salt
3 limes (1 lime for every 1 chicken breast)
2 cloves garlic (1 average sized clove per breast, roughly)
1 - 2 chilli peppers (As much chilli as you fancy!)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chilli powder

baps / lettuce / onion / whatever you fancy yourself

Recipe:

For this recipe you'll be using a brine marinade. It counts as a marinade because you're soaking in a seasoned acidic solution!

Assemble your ingredients. In the picture I have pepper instead of ground coriander because I couldn't find it. I found it after I took the picture. C'est la vie.



1) Make up about one and a half pints of brine for every two chicken breasts. It should be just saltier as you would make if you were going to gargle it for a sore throat! I am terrible at measurements. Usually I make up my solution and once it looks about right, I take a taste and if it is horrible tasting enough to make me go "bllerrgghh" and spit it into the sink it's perfect!

Chop up the chilli and garlic. If you fancy spicier chicken burgers, lash more chilli in there.

Half the limes, ready to juice them.

Put the chicken breasts into a zip-lock bag.



2) Juice two of the limes into the briny water

Add the chilli and garlic to the zip-lock bag with the chicken and then pour the water in. (Carefully! It's pretty easy to accidentally let go of the bag and sent limey-briny water cascading across your counter-top. I usually get someone to hold the bag, or I put the bag into a bowl first.)

Squeeze the air out of the bag and seal it. Give it a bit of a shake to spread the ingredients around a little bit. It's probably best to put the bag into a bowl just in case of leakage.

Put the chicken into the fridge for about an hour. (If you're using quite large chicken breasts, you should marinade for longer)

3) Once you're all done marinading, it's time to rub your chicken.

Take the chicken out of the solution and give it a good rinse under the tap. This is to remove excess salt. I like to use a strainer so that I can retrieve my chilli and garlic bits. I can then put them on the chicken when it's grilling for extra flavour.

Put the chicken in a bowl, add a little olive oil and mix well. Using your hands is the easiest way!

Add the ingredients for the rub and the juice of half a lime. I like to use one teaspoon of paprika, one teaspoon of ground ginger, one teaspoon of ground coriander and one teaspoon of chilli powder. You can use whatever you like best.



A little drop of bourbon wouldn't go astray either ... if it happened to be ... accidentally added. Somehow. By mistake. ¬_¬ ....... :pac:




4) After that, you just need to grill those babies! I cut my chicken breasts in half because the only burger buns left in the shop were really small.



5) Grill until cooked, really. They usually take about 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken pieces you have.

Serve with your favourite sides and accompaniments. We had them with white baps, lettuce, onion, cheese and mayo with chips on the side.



Summary of recipes.




The original basis for these amazing recipe diagrams also come from cookingforengineers.com. Aren't they cool? Whenever I have the patience, I made them out for new recipes I come across.

So that's me. I hope y'all enjoy. If you've any questions, post them up. I'll keep an eye on the thread.

littlehedgehog

Best. Pictures. Ever.

*goes to read recipe*

Little Alex

Thank you, reallyrose! I really love your ducks with the little hats on.

I love the team effort involved in lugging the bottle of JD!

My ducks, however, are as battle hardened as yours, if not more! My ducks would kick your ducks' asses!

hdowney

Insanely good recipe I LOVE it. So I think I know what I am cooking saturday Now to buy more JD as I 'may' have drank all we had ¬_¬

Honey-ec

Can't wait to try these, they look (and sound) amazing.

Love your assistant too

_blank_

Looking forward to this one.

hdowney

I have missed cooking club (the last six mths have been BAD and I have not really gotten in here) and this is a fantastic recipe to come back to

John Mason

Des wrote: »

Looking forward to this one.

the next saturday you are working, i will put my best wife hat on, and have it on the table for when you get home

Hande hoche!

These look delicious, will definitely have to try them at some stage next week.

The Big Red Button

These look amazing - hoping to try them next weekend!

hdowney

This will be tonights dinner, when the bleeding things have marinaded

Malari

I made these today with homemade wedges. Very tasty. Nice tang from the lime and the fillets were nice and juicy. I normally don't like chicken breasts as they can be dry but the brine seemed to work. I have no idea if was salty enough or too salty though!

hdowney

I failed slightly in that I put far to much chilli (dry and fresh) in (not that I didn't like the spice, cos I did) and couldn't taste the lime at all!!!

Malari

^^ I forgot to buy fresh chillis so I just used dried. I'm always afraid to put too much chilli in stuff so I err on the side of caution. That's probably why mine was uber-limey!

hdowney

Malari wrote: »

^^ I forgot to buy fresh chillis so I just used dried. I'm always afraid to put too much chilli in stuff so I err on the side of caution. That's probably why mine was uber-limey!

I forgot to buy jd (shock) and it was past alcohol trading hours before i reliased

reallyrose

hdowney wrote: »

I failed slightly in that I put far to much chilli (dry and fresh) in (not that I didn't like the spice, cos I did) and couldn't taste the lime at all!!!

If you think you've put too much chilli in, you can squeeze a little lime juice over the chicken as it grills. I usually have a half lime left over, I tend to use it for adding a dash to the burger / chips / salad.

John Mason

I made this for dinner tonight.

I have no idea what it tastes like but himself sounds like he is enjoying it :rolleyes:

_blank_

Very nice indeed

Honey-ec

Made these (without the buns etc.) as a side to have with coriander pesto tagliatelle last night, and cooked them on the barbie. They were really, really good. Only change I made was I brined them altogether in one big bowl (didn't really see the need for individual bags) and I crushed the garlic to get the brine really pungent. Oh, and I added the zest of a lime to the rub, just cause I'm kind of addicted to limes.

Thanks, Reallyrose!

Malari

Honey-ec wrote: »

Made these (without the buns etc.) as a side to have with coriander pesto tagliatelle last night, and cooked them on the barbie. They were really, really good. Only change I made was I brined them altogether in one big bowl (didn't really see the need for individual bags) and I crushed the garlic to get the brine really pungent. Oh, and I added the zest of a lime to the rub, just cause I'm kind of addicted to limes.

Thanks, Reallyrose!

Did it say individual bags?! I missed that. I put mine all in one. Then into a bowl, as it turned out there was a hole in the bag :rolleyes::p

hdowney

I used one bag also. *goes back to top of thread to check required number of bags*

Honey-ec

I possibly just took it up that way. Not really sure why it would call for a bag rather than a bowl anyway, but it makes no difference! Unless maybe you'd get some idiots putting an acidic marinade into a metal bowl...?

Anyway, point remains, the chicken is delicious!

Malari

Honey-ec wrote: »

I possibly just took it up that way. Not really sure why it would call for a bag rather than a bowl anyway, but it makes no difference! Unless maybe you'd get some idiots putting an acidic marinade into a metal bowl...?

Anyway, point remains, the chicken is delicious!

Stainless steel is ok though. I don't know if they'd be idiots for doing so exactly...:o

swine

Probably stating the obvious, but if you roll your limes (and other citrus fruits in general) across the counter-top with your palm before juicing them you can increase the amount of juice you get. Looking forward to trying these!

reallyrose

Various zip-lock bag discussion

It's one bag for all the chicken and to be honest, the recipe I originally used and adapted/evolved used a zip-lock bag so I never really thought about it.

Would an open bowl make your fridge smell like limey garlic maybe?

Honey-ec

reallyrose wrote: »

It's one bag for all the chicken and to be honest, the recipe I originally used and adapted/evolved used a zip-lock bag so I never really thought about it.

Would an open bowl make your fridge smell like limey garlic maybe?

Well I covered it with clingfilm. But limey garlic is a lovely smell anyway, so it wouldn't bother me if it did. Whenever I make buttermilk fried chicken I'm forever sniffing away at the marinade!

Going to make these again tomorrow, they really go fantastically well with coriander pesto.

confusticated

Made these last night, the lime and spices were lovely together. I didn't have enough limes though, will get more for next time.

Photo isn't the best, and will be cross-posted because I had them with Honey-ec's mac and cheese:)

Danii86

1st time making a recipie from the cookin club even though iv been drewling over it for awhile now. Made these tonight, not as burgers though, O.M.F.G these were lush! Served it with fried red pepper and onion (with the garlic and chilli from the brine) and lime and corriander couscous.
The chicken was sooo moist and juicy due to the brining and the spices and lime really worked well together, im definatly going to make these again soon for the OH as i was only cooking for 1 tonight.
Brilliant recipie, thanks

Padraig Mor

Wow these were good! Perhaps the most moist, tender chicken I've had?! And a hefty kick too - although I went pretty heavy on the chilli and chilli powder. Absolutely making these again - and soon!