It was shortly after dinner on Wednesday night when my wife was making up our shopping list and she asked me if I wanted to grill this past weekend. It was honestly more of a rhetorical question because 
Although we have a freezer full of different kinds and cuts of meat in our garage, I was leaning towards bratwurst (brats). Then she threw a curve ball at me. Since I didn't answer right away, she started throwing out possibilities. Brats? Greek chicken tacos?
Just as I had finally made a decision, she floats an option I hadn't even considered. That's when I decided why not do both? The chicken didn't necessarily have to be right off the grill for the tacos, so I could grill everything up Saturday night and we would be set for Saturday and Sunday dinner. Problem solved!
Through the week, my breakfast usually consists of a small bowl of cereal before I got flying out the door to work. My wife does a little better sometimes having oatmeal or an English muffin with lunch meat and cheese on it. The weekends are different though. Unless we have plans, we slow things down and we actually take time to cook a big breakfast.
When I was younger, we had a restaurant in town called "The Texan". It was a small regional chain with a couple different locations in the surrounding area. One of the meals I loved to get there was the ham steak and eggs. That was the inspiration for breakfast this past Saturday morning.
Two soft (sunny side up) eggs and a couple of leftover slices of lunch meat heated in the pan along with the eggs. It was just what I needed to jump-start my day and give me the energy to go clear the snow off my parents driveway.
I don't have a picture, but I added a couple slices of toast because you simply can't have runny eggs without toast right?
Later that evening, it was time to prep the grill for my cook. As you can see, I am a big fan of the two zone cooking method. I shove all the coals over to one side and leave that as my hot zone. I can then move things over to the cooler side whenever necessary. You can also see there was a still a bit of cooked-on gunk on my grates from the ribs I did a couple of weeks ago. Once the grill was at a decent temperature ~400 degrees Fahrenheit, I used a grill brush and cleaned that stuff off.
This was actually a pretty perfect cook since the chicken breasts needed a more direct cooking method and the bratwurst I usually do with an indirect method. I've talked about this before, but many people boil their brats before they cook them on the grill. The benefit of this is it takes less time to grill them, but I feel it sometimes give them a mushy texture.
Instead, I slow cook the brats away from the flame. This allows them to stay exceptionally juicy. One side effect of my method is it also leaves the casing for the sausage a little tougher. If you can get past that part, I feel the end result is more than worth it (as you will see).
So here we have some chicken breasts that I trimmed and cut thin. We then marinated them in Greek salad dressing for most of the day.
On the cooler side of the grill, we have pork bratwurst that carry the flavors of a "western" omelette. This is one of my favorite flavors of brat from the particular meat market I picked these up at. Cheese, peppers, onions, some of the best stuff in the world mixed up into the bratwurst. Those are the ones that are a bit curved in the back.
Another meat market we like to visit has the chicken garlic Parmesan brats that you see in the front of this picture. Those are for my wife, she loves the flavor and typically prefers chicken over pork.
I close the cover and gave the grill about five minutes before I needed to flip the chicken.
After flipping the chicken I gave it another five minutes (or so) on the other side and I left the bratwurst alone for that first ten minutes.
This is where I made a small mistake. I got busy in the house and I accidentally left the chicken over the coals a bit too long on the second flip. I don't normally mind a bit of char, but as you can see the tip of this piece got pretty wrecked. Our dog Jovi enjoyed that bit, so no harm no foul I guess.
I moved the chicken into the middle of the grill still near the coals, but not right over them so it could finish cooking. I also gave the bratwurst their first flip. I know if you look at the picture above you might think that nothing is happening, but trust me, there is magic taking place inside that casing and the result is going to blow you away.
This was after waiting another ten minutes or so and giving them another flip. See what I mean, things are really starting to come together now.
The chicken was doing alright too.
After another flip or two, it was finally ready to pull of the grill. I used my digital instant read thermometer to check the internal temp of the chicken. I didn't bother checking the brats as I could tell they were good to go just by looking at them.
I diced up the chicken and put it in a small container for Sunday night. Since my wife and I have been trying to reduce our carb intake, I also diced up the bratwurst and we ate it sans bun.
Sorry the pictures are a bit blurry. I was in a rush to get them taken so I could sit down and dig in to this awesome dinner.
We rounded the meal out with some brussels sprouts sauteed on the stovetop and some butternut squash mac and cheese from Trader Joe's. I am not really a fan of squash, but this mac and cheese is amazing. They only have it in stock in the fall and since my wife and I don't have a Trader Joe's near us, we usually buy about 10 to 15 boxes of it when we visit our in-laws in Ohio and store it in the freezer until the next year when it is in stock again.
It is so creamy, delicious, and honestly not that bad for you since they use squash to thicken the sauce instead of 100% cheese. You should try it out if you get the chance.
Now for some gratuitous macro shots...
It was a pretty fantastic meal if I do say so myself!
Let's not forget about that chicken though...
Now, you might be thinking... so if this is a Greek taco, it is just a gyro right? While it does share some of the same components, it isn't exactly the same. First, as you saw above, we use chicken instead of traditional gyro meat. We also use a flour tortilla lightly toasted instead of a pita.
This is probably one my most favorite meals. It is so light and refreshing. The flavors mix together in a magical way. I could seriously eat like five of these tacos and not feel one bit of bad about it.
On this occasion, I only ate three, but that is mostly because I knew I wanted to have some ice cream as a snack later. Plus I wanted to have some of the salad leftover for my lunch today.
It's safe to say, it was an epic weekend of eating in the 
