Thursday, March 24, 2011

Lemon


On my quest to add different meals to our dinnertime repertoire, I went to make something simple: Lemon Chicken.

As Ina Garten would say - how easy is that???

Well, since it was her recipe, she should know - right?

It actually quite easy to prepare. 5-10 minutes prep time, tops. Then 30-40 for baking. That's it. Ok........it's easy on paper.

I think playing with the amount of lemon is a bit tricky....and necessary. I like lemon chicken, but this ended up tasting more like lemons with some chicken. Maybe it was because I used three chicken breasts instead of the four which was in the instructions. I don't really think so though.

Anyways, unless you go to your chicken monger (hey, if they have fish mongers, why not one for every main dish?), they just don't package them in fours anymore. Why is that? Not only that, I challenge you to find boneless breasts with the skin still on.

So in that regard, yes, I deviated from the recipe. Sue me.

As you can see in the title image, it's heavy on the garlic. Nine cloves. In my experience, you can never have too much garlic.

So the sauce is olive oil, wine, lemon, lemon zest, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme and oregano. That's it. The sauce sits at the bottom of the dish - you don't even cover the chicken with it - and it all just bakes away.

The one challenge we faced was getting things to brown in some dishes. Even Ina says if it doesn't brown correctly, to throw under the broiler. Hence our issue: our oven does not have a broiler.

I know. It's sounds crazy, right?

The oven is so industrial and so old, it has no broiling element inside. Normally things brown ok, and while the chicken was completely moist, tender and edible, it seemed a little grey. It actually had better colour in the above picture than it did after cooking.

I'm not sure if I'll keep Lemon Chicken in the food recipe playlist, albeit with a tweak or two, or if I'll just move on.



Song by: U2

8 comments:

Ray's Cowboy said...

It really sounds yummy.. What time is dinner?

Ray

Cubby said...

Mmm, lemon chicken. I love it.

Birdie said...

I think I associate citrus too much with cleaning products. Lemon and orange need to be subtle in foods unless it's a boat drink with an umbrella.

anne marie in philly said...

I am SO crashing at your house the next time I visit cleveland! I bet you make a mean chicken paprikash too!

Nick UK said...

It would probably have browned and crisped if it still had skin on, to get a better finish you could try doing the top side in the frying pan before adding all the other ingredients.

Anonymous said...

I love Ina and have had much success with over 20 recipes.

If you got the recipe from the Food Network site, be sure to read the reviews. Lot's of great tips and info like, "use only 2 lemons."

Next time brown the cutlets for 2-3 minutes per side and you should have better results.

Dith said...

Blythe wants to know if the recipe called for you to bake the chicken skin side down on the sauce. That would have kept it from getting too lemony.

She says to take a package of chicken boobs to the butcher and ask them to bone them (tee hee) with the skin on.

Ur-spo said...

There are lots of variations to lemon chicken, so have a good time putzing around with the recipe.