Surprisingly Easy and Delicious Beer Marinated Grilled Chicken
Grilled chicken legs? Yes, these are Surprisingly Easy and Delicious Beer Marinated Grilled Chicken legs! Dave loves chicken legs and thighs, while I prefer the white meat.
However, Dave grilled some chicken legs one night. He just seasoned them with salt and pepper. I was pleasantly surprised by how juicy and delicious they really were. Since then, we have had them frequently.
I usually keep chicken legs in the freezer. Using the big gallon freezer bags, I place them in the bag in a single flat layer and freeze. Thawing them is much easier and faster when frozen this way. For this recipe, the chicken legs were thawed in the bag in a bath of cold water in the sink. Then, the marinade was just added to the bag.
Searching for a recipe to kick these up a notch, I found a recipe for 'Grilled Beer Chicken' on 'RecipeMothers.com'. It is probably delicious, too! Unfortunately, I didn't have all the ingredients. After this, I will buy some limes to have on hand, too. Then, I will try their recipe to compare tastes.
So, I began to create a similar version but with ingredients, we did have in the pantry. It's amazing what you can discover when you step outside of the box and try to improvise instead of running to the store.
Their recipe called for onion salt. We were fresh out of that. Did you know that you can make your own onion salt? It is just 1 part onion powder and 3 parts salt. 1/4 teaspoon of onion powder and 3/4 teaspoon of salt is equivalent to 1 teaspoon of onion salt.
So, isn't it interesting that you can also make garlic salt the same way?
Duh! So, why would we even buy onion salt or garlic salt? It's three-quarters cheap old table salt!
We also did not have a lime. The recipe called for the juice from 1/2 of a lime. You can substitute equal parts of lemon juice for the lime juice, which I have done before. We always have lemons in the freezer. I saw a post on Pinterest that said you should freeze your lemons! So I did.
I have started doing this, no more shriveled lemons going to waste. This post also says you can grate the entire lemon, peel and all, to add extra flavor to your dishes! Most of the flavor is in the peel.
Garlic cloves, which I almost always have on hand, were missing from the vegetable basket. I thought about using garlic powder but remembered we had 'Tastefully Simple' Garlic Garlic Seasoning Blend in the pantry! 1 teaspoon of Garlic Garlic is equivalent to 1 medium clove of fresh garlic.
The ingredients for the marinade were combined in a bowl and then just poured over the chicken in the freezer bag.
Marinade:
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1- 1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
3 tsp. Tastefully Simple's 'Garlic Garlic'
Juice from 1/2 of a lemon'
1 cup of beer (We used Leinenkugel s' Beer)
Next, a bunch of fresh parsley was chopped and added to the bag. The bag was turned around and upside down a few times to distribute the parsley in the bag.
The bag with the chicken legs covered in the marinade was refrigerated for about 5 hours. The legs were removed from the bag onto a platter and then placed on the grill, reserving the marinade.
These were grilled at medium heat for about 40 minutes. (If the heat is too high, it will flame up.) The chicken should have no pink inside. Every 5 - 10 minutes the legs were turned and some of the leftover marinade was brushed on the pieces.
Can I tell you that these were delicious? Yes, I was really surprised at how flavorful they really were! We grilled twelve legs and Dave ate six of them. He said he could taste the beer. I don't drink beer. The flavor was really good, though.
Grilled chicken legs? This may be one of my new favorite recipes. Yes, these are Surprisingly Easy and Delicious Beer Marinated Grilled Chicken legs!
