Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The most amazing chicken you'll ever have in your life OMG go make it now, now, now

You like that title? Huh?

Yeah...me, too.

So, I'm a little frugal. And I'm the person in our lovely household who once (perhaps stupidly) raised her hand to volunteer to do all the food shopping for the whole house and most of the cooking, kind of every week, kind of indefinitely.

At the time, I didn't realize it meant until death do we part.

So, now you can find me at the Giant. Or Acme. A lot.

BUT, I take my task seriously and try to plan for a couple of complete meals each week that are healthy and (did I mention?) affordable.

Enter Grilled Tuscan Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon. I bow down to Martha and her prowess.

Here's the recipe, with my notes. And don't think that you can't make this on a training night. I came home, assembled the chick in the marinade, went out for a run, and by the time I was showered and ready to go it was time to fire the grill. It's actually perfect for the nights you have training!

We made steamed green beans and an awesome Blitz Bread I'll have to write about later. (But if you're like me, and think fresh bread is beyond your skill set, go and try this bread. It's yummy and easy. Really. No seriously.)

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Ingredients

Serves 4

  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1 tablespoon dried rosemary [1]
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 garlic cloves [2]
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 chicken (3 1/2 to 4 pounds), cut into 8 or 10 serving pieces [3]
  • 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice [4]

Directions

  1. Heat grill to medium. In a small saucepan, bring 1/3 cup water and rosemary to a boil; remove from heat, cover, and let steep 5 minutes. [5] Transfer to a blender. [6] Add oil and garlic; season with salt and pepper. Puree until smooth; let cool.
  2. Combine chicken and rosemary oil in a shallow dish or resealable plastic bag, and turn to coat. Cover, and let marinate at least 15 minutes at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator, turning chicken occasionally.
  3. Remove chicken from marinade; place on grill. Discard marinade. Cook, basting frequently with lemon juice and turning as needed to prevent burning, until cooked throughout, 20 to 30 minutes.
Recipe and Image Source
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[1] Use fresh. Seriously, it's totally worth it.

[2] Truth be told, I always use more garlic than recipes call for. Sometimes it bites me in the arse, but not this time. I used three large cloves.

[3] I used bone-in chicken breasts for this for the first time -- and boy was it worth it. We removed all the skin and fat to make it healthy, but trust me there was still a boatload of flavor left.

[4] Mighty M just loves to juice lemons and limes now that we got a fancy new fangled juicer gadget for our engagement party. He squeezed the begezzes out of three small lemons to baste 3 large sized pieces of chicken.

[5] Never, ever, ever have I done this technique, but BOY did it work! We only marinated for an hour and the flavor of the rosemary was loud and clear in the chicken. I doubt this would have been the case had we skipped this step.

[6] Years ago my sister got me this sweet little mini chopper. I rarely used it. In fact, I never used it. (Sorry, sweets!) BUT NOW, I've been using it all the time to make dressings and marinates and spreads. Love it. Totally recommend it.

5 comments:

Wes said...

Girlfriend, if you are going to start talking about food, I am going to go bananas :-) not only do I like to cook this kind of stuff, but I'm hungry and its 1.5 hours until I eat again!!! LOL!!!

I {heart} my mini chopper. This recipe looks very similar to the one Dee Dee made last night out of Chef Ramsey's new cook book. Fun stuff!!

The Original MAJ said...

I would be salivating if being knocked up didn't turn me into this weird chicken-hating machine. That dish right there is (pre-pregnancy) Meggan's Food Heaven.

:) said...

Nom nom nom nom...I hungee.

Kevin said...

Looks pretty good. I may just have to try and make it

LZ said...

Been reading your blog for a little bit (from links from others). I had all of these ingredients on hand, so I made the chicken tonight. It was great! Thanks!
-Laurie Zack