Sweet & Spicy Mango Grilled Chicken {Naptime Everyday}

What’s Going on Today: Loving the summer weather, produce. Not loving the early morning wake-ups (although it makes for a nice afternoon naptime!)

Naptime Goals: Whip up Spicy Mango BBQ Sauce, marinate chicken, make quick couscous salad. Book editing!

Tonight’s Menu: Spicy Mango Grilled Chicken, Couscous salad, strawberry-mint ice cream!

The only problem with grilling I really face is that my husband comes home so late from work I have to have everything ready the second he pulls in order to get dinner on the table as quickly as possible. My daughter’s bedtime usually immediately follows dinner and I pay the price the next day if she is up too late! I would just grill our meal ahead of time, but I think cold grilled meat isn’t as good as when it is fresh off the heat. To make it easy for me, and to make the meat as flavorful as possible, I often make the grilling sauce during naptime and let the meat marinate all afternoon. In this case, last week I had some slightly overripe mangos so I decided to whip up a new-to-use sauce with what was on hand.

The thing I’ve learned in time about barbecue sauce is that I like it to be both sweet and spicy. I don’t like it to be sweetened by sugar, however, because then the meat gets an almost candy-like coating which I don’t love. Instead, I prefer a more natural fruity sweetness which is why I thought the mangos would be perfect. I chopped them up and adding them to the food processor with some Stonewall Kitchen spicy ketchup (though any kind of ketchup and a pinch of red pepper would suffice), garlic cloves, salt and chili powder. After a one minute blitz the bbq sauce was done!

My rule for marinated skin-on chicken is to slather the chicken both over and under the skin with the sauce in order to get it to really penetrate the meat. Then I cover it with plastic wrap and leave the whole thing in the fridge for the afternoon. When my husband came home that evening I already had the coals lit and the chicken ready to go. I had reserved some barbecue sauce for him to brush on during grilling. Since we’ve got this drill down by now the chicken was off the grill and on the table within about 15 minutes. It was moist all the way through and the crispy skin had a terrific spicy tang from the sauce. After we eagerly polished off our meal we were focused on the next event: bath, bed, and a big glass of wine for mom and dad.