Grilled Lemon Chicken Salad

Yum yum! I literally just finished eating this meal with my grill master and fiancé, Peter, and I had to post this so you could eat it as soon as humanly possible. The recent sunny, warmer days have inspired Peter and I to go outdoors to do more of our cooking. I absolutely love when Peter grills. He enjoys cooking with me on a regular basis, but he puts so much love into his grilling and it shows in the results. Often our grilled meals are delicious in a very simple way. This is the first example of this for the 2009 grilling season.

In contrast to the last meal I posted, which served my ravenous 7 person volunteer community, this meal served the two of us perfectly with no leftovers. It would be super simple to double or triple depending on your needs. 

Grilled Lemon Chicken Salad

Preheat your grill (or oven, although you might have to experiment with cooking temperature and time).

While the grill is heating up, prepare one large boneless, skinless chicken breast by trimming the excess fat and butterflying it.  If your chicken breasts are smaller, you may want to use two, but ours was jumbo sized and one was plenty for the two of us. To butterfly, place chicken on cutting board with your non-knife hand palm down on top of the chicken breast. Cut into the chicken with your knife parallel to the cutting board and holding it firm with your non-knife hand. Once you get started, you can open the chicken breast up like a book. Do not cut all the way through. You want one piece of chicken that opens and closes like a book.

Season chicken with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cut one lemon in half and cut three or four very thin slices off one half. Place these slices in the inside of your chicken book. Squeeze the remaining juice from the half you cut slices from onto the chicken. Close the book and sprinkle the outside with more salt and pepper and Italian seasoning or your favorite herbs. Put your chicken on the grill. Cook 7-9 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile, wash one romaine lettuce heart and pat dry. Cut the romaine heart in half lengthwise so that you have two long, slender half-heads of lettuce. Brush the flat side of the lettuce with oil and squeeze juice of the other half lemon onto each side.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Right at the end of the cooking time, move your chicken breasts off the main rack. This is where this recipe gets really interesting. You’re going to grill the lettuce. Turn the grill to high, throw the romaine hearts onto the grill grate, flat side down. Grill for about a minute. You just want to wilt and crisp up the flat side of the romaine hearts.

Put the chicken and the romaine lettuce on a plate and eat! We also grilled a green bell pepper to go with our meal, but it was more of a side than part of the dish.