This post is a follow up to the brine post from last week and is intended to give you a few ideas of how to break down and eat your bird.
I put together this you tube video as a visual tutorial and then I thought I would elaborate on what you see in the video throughout the blog post. There are many ways to break down a chicken. This is basically the same way, shown twice. The second being a bit more detailed.
I love chicken.
It has such a wide variety of uses and you can cook it so many different ways. There are so many flavors and pairings for chicken. And it's cheap. You can easily get more than one meal out of a bird if you are creative about it too. Chicken should definitely be in your weekly rotation of meals. So, let's take a look at it.
IDEA #1: Chicken Parmesan
This one wasn't in the video. And this first step is how I make chicken Picatta & Chicken Marsala as well
Set your Oven to 375.
Take boneless skinless chicken breasts and dredge them in SEASONED flour.
Saute the chicken breasts in a pan over medium-high heat with some olive oil and butter.
Flip and cook the other side.
Top the pan roasted chicken breasts with red sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese and place in the oven for 4-6 minutes.
You can eat this as a sandwich, with polenta, with pasta, with a salad, roasted vegetables. Of course my sauce is homemade but a good quality store bought sauce is fine too. If you really want to step it up put some pepperoni or salami under the sauce and cheese on there!! This is a family favorite in my house!
IDEA #2: Sweet Chili Wings
These wings are Kim's favorite (Kim is my Fiancé). We make them for the potlucks that she has at the hospital (Kim is a nurse) and they are a favorite on her floor.
This picture here is once the marinated wings (from the video.. you watched the video right?) have come out of the Traeger. But I take them a step further from here.
From par smoked I take them and put them into a pan with a little more of that sweet chili sauce and a splash of fish sauce. Then I reduce them on a medium heat until that sweet chili sauce gets a little caramel-like.
You can see the difference. These stick to your fingers and slide off the bone. That's a good combination.
IDEA #3: Lemon Rosemary Chicken
This smelled so good after its night in the fridge on marinade!!
Lemons and Rosemary are all over town. If you don't have any in your yard, go take a walk and try out that idea. It's fresh, savory and great with rice and vegetables. It's a clean, simple weeknight meal.
I cook pretty much everything in my Traeger because all I have to do is a flip a switch but these would be better off a live fire charcoal grill like a Weber.
I smoked them at 350 degrees. More of a roast really...
Breasts were pulled when they got to about 155-160 degree internal temp. I always pull boneless breast under my desired finish temp of 165 because it will carry over cook to 165 from 160 and you will end up with more moisture retention. I hate dry chicken breast. Life is too short.
Thighs were pulled around 165 degrees internal temp. Those are bone in and truthfully you can cook them to a visual point of coming off the bone if you want. The bone keeps it so much more moist.
We ate our Rosemary Chicken with Scalloped Potatoes. Layering the potatoes was a great activity for the kids to get involved with the cooking. My mom used to make Rosemary Roasted Chicken a lot when I was a kid. She would cook her bird whole with big chunky vegetables in the roasting pan with the bird that always ended up being as good or better than the chicken itself. Even sitting here writing about it is making me want to cook a bird like that... This week...
I hope this post was helpful to you. Feel free to leave some comments here or on the youtube post.
Eat Well!
I'm off to Farmers Market!
Justin West
Comments