Chimichurri chicken with veggie sides

This weekend I was lucky enough to be visiting my sister and the rest of her family. My brother in law convinced her they needed a big, bad ass grill, so I had to take advantage of that. I figured chimichurri chicken with a bunch of veggie sides would be perfect for such a nice, sunny day. Also, after the amount of beer and heavy food we had for lunch, the lighter the better.

Chimichurri is super easy, it just takes a lot of chopping if you don't have a food processor. This is pretty much the recipe I got from a website called Asado Argentina, all about traditional Argentinian BBQ. I thought they were defunct, but I'm so excited to see today that they have new posts coming.



For chimichurri, chop one bunch of parsley, 1/2 a red bell pepper, 1 seeded tomato, 1 yellow onion and a few garlic cloves. I like to pulse it in a food processor, but chopping it up fine will work too. Just don't go too fine - think pico de gallo instead of salsa. Throw this in a bowl and add 1 tbs each oregano and paprika, 1 tsp black pepper and red pepper flakes. Mix all of this well with 1 tbs kosher salt.

The trick is to mix it all up with the salt and let it sit 1/2 hour, then add 1/4 cup each red wine vinegar and water and let it sit 1/2 hour, then mix in 1/2 cup of olive oil. Yummy goodness.

This is one of my favorite recipes I've found lately. I make a double batch and put in on absolutely everything, and the longer it sits, the better it tastes. For this weekend, I used 1/2 of it to marinate some boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs.

The chicken went on the hot side of the grill after a few hours. I wrapped a few stalks of asparagus with proscuitto and put the bunches on the top level of the grill to hang out. For the corn on the cob, I unwrapped each stalk without stripping off the leaves, removed the stringy stuff, added olive oil and salt and wrapped it back up. That went on the medium side of the grill. I served all this with a tart coleslaw made from leftover cabbage and carrots and the rest of the chimichurri.

Ah-mazing. The fam loved it.