Weekly Meal Plan #51

The Mojo Rojo does double duty here — it’s the marinade and the sauce, blended from dried chiles, garlic, and red wine vinegar until fiery and deep. Grilled hot over direct heat, this is the bold opener a summer entertaining week deserves.

Pizza night gets a serious upgrade when you swap the tomato sauce for smoky BBQ, pile on rotisserie chicken, jalapeño, and two kinds of cheese, and bake it until the crust goes crisp at the edges. Tuesday is the perfect night to give everyone something fun without standing over a hot grill.

Most people have never cooked beef finger meat and that’s exactly why I love putting it in the middle of the week. It grills hot and fast, tastes like the best parts of a bone-in steak, and takes almost no effort to pull off.

When the grill can wait but the cravings can’t, the air fryer gets these drumsticks golden and crispy before a final blast of heat caramelizes the BBQ glaze right into the skin. The weekend is one day out and this one keeps the momentum going.

Lamb intimidates a lot of people and I genuinely don’t understand why. Fresh rosemary, grated garlic, and lemon zest rubbed into rib chops, roasted at 425°F, and on the table in under 30 minutes — Friday night just found its headliner.

The trick with this one is splitting the aromatics in two: half go into the buttery panko crust before it bakes, the other half stay raw and hit the salmon the second it comes out of the oven as a fresh gremolata.

8 hours in a cilantro, lime, garlic, and jalapeño marinade does more for chicken breasts than almost anything else I know. Off the grill with a char on the outside and completely juicy through — the kind of closer that has everyone still asking about next week.