Thyme & Paprika Grilled Chicken w/ Spicy Cucumber Apple Chutney & Grilled Radishes

     Summer is finally here, and for seasonal food lovers everywhere, that means one thing: Grill weather. If you've ever lived through a summer in America, then you're most likely very well acquainted with grilled chicken. A dish which all too often ends with dry, flavorless, slightly tough meat, accompanied by under-thought side dishes, or even worse, nothing. But with a little bit of care and creativity, paired with a few fresh vegetables, we can recreate this classic dish, and take it from kind-of-boring to new and delicious.

     The first thing we have to contemplate is the chicken. If you want to get chicken at your grocery store, that's fine, and it certainly won't ruin your final product, but if you really want the flavor of the chicken to shine through and add another layer of flavor to your dish, then you want to find fresh, chemical free chicken. You can find truly fresh chicken at your local farmers market, and you can buy directly from some of the local farms in your are. For a full list of local poultry farms, click here. My chicken is - of course - from Baffoni's Poultry Farm in Johnston. If you're not a regular eater of local meat and produce, I highly suggest trying it at least once. The difference in flavor is a lot larger than you would imagine and you'll be pretty surprised when you actually taste the flavor of chicken for the first time in your life. After being genetically modified, stripped of any relatively natural living conditions, and shipped halfway across the world, chicken tends to lose almost all of it's natural, fresh flavor by the time it hits shelves at your local grocery store. I like to use leg quarters when grilling. The dark meat holds up to the heat without drying out, and cooking meat with the bone-in extracts a lot of flavor from the bone into the meat. However, if you prefer white meat, then use the breast. Cooking is all about using the ingredients and flavors that YOU like.

     Once we have our chicken, the next thing to contemplate is seasoning. One of the biggest mistakes people tend to make when seasoning meat for the grill is using seasoning as flavor. Remember, we just spent time sourcing fresh local chicken, and we want that flavor to shine through. Seasoning should be used to enhance the natural flavor of our chicken, not to cover it. I like to keep my seasoning simple. I start with salt and pepper, and like to use one herb and one spice. Two of my favorites for chicken ate thyme and paprika. Remember, we want to season the meat, not flavor it. Over-seasoning is just as bad as under-seasoning, and with a little practice, you'll find your perfect balance. Once your chicken is seasoned, it's ready to hit the grill, which should be heated to around 400-450 degrees. If you're using white meat, it will cook a lot faster than dark meat, so check constantly and be careful not to overcook it.

     Alright; our chicken is perfectly seasoned, and cooking away. Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's time to start thinking about sides. One of my absolute favorite grilled side dishes is simple, tasty, and completely under-utilized by so many home cooks: grilled radishes. Some people are scared away from using radishes because they don't like the spice of raw radishes, but when they're cooked, they lose their kick and gain a flavor that falls halfway between potatoes and roasted cauliflower. If you've ever picked a radish, you know that by the next day, they've already started to lose some of their flavor, so it makes a big difference to buy fresh, local radishes, especially when they're so easy to find at just about any farmers market in Rhode Island. I like to quarter my radishes, and toss them with olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. If your grill's grate is too big, and you think your radishes will fall through, you can cook them in a sauté pan, or leave them in larger pieces. Cook these until they're brown on all sides and tender all the way through.

     While your chicken and radishes are finishing up on the grill, we have one more component to this meal that needs to be made. No summer time grilled dish is complete without a cold component. For this dish, I'm making a cold chutney. More specifically, a spicy cucumber apple chutney. This is a simple side for the chicken which will add a spicy kick, as well as balance out the smoky paprika with sweet , fresh flavors. For this chutney, we'll start with one cucumber, peeled and diced, as well as one apple and one pear also diced. To this we'll add a tiny pinch of salt. We don't want our chutney to taste like salt, but we want just enough to help bring out the natural flavor of the fruit. Finally, we'll add minced cilantro, to give the chutney a refreshing flavor, and sriracha for a spicy kick. Add as much, or as little as you like, depending on how well you handle spicy food.

     When our chicken and radishes come off the grill we're finally ready for a delicious, fresh summertime feast.

     Hopefully you're inspired to add some creative twists to your summertime grilling this year. To keep up with this blog, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Happy noshing!