Easy Marinated Chicken

A number of you (of my 10 faithful readers) have commented on cooking complexity and how it is intimidating. I'm going to show you a method I got from Alton Brown's 'Good Eat's" show that is simplicity itself. I guarantee that you will be able to add tons of flavor with a minimum of fuss or effort. I've used this with all kinds of meats both large (halves of chickens, roasts) and small (pork chops, boneless chicken breasts)

The key is to understand that you start with a base with which you can then alter things to your taste.

Marinade Base:

• One large onion
• Two carrots
• Some oil (1/2 to 1 cup) - olive oil or otherwise
• Some wine or beer (1 cup)
• Salt
• Pepper

Don't get too hung up with measurements! Marinating this way is very, very forgiving.

Flavor Options:
You can use these as you so choose - there are no rules. However because of the technique, you will be imparting a lot of flavor so I tend to not put in too many different flavors at once.

• Dried or fresh herbs - In one version I put a ton of fresh sage and rosemary from my garden because they are so flavorful. Put in what you like.
• Garlic - a lot or a little as you like
• Spices - the one I'm doing in this example uses a Hungarian inspiration
• Liquid flavorings - soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, barbecue sauce, etc.

Sample - Hungarian Inspired Chicken

Here are all the ingredients that I used - Onion, carrot, green pepper, fresh parsley, fresh thyme, olive oil, wine, black pepper, salt, Hungarian paprika (lots), saffron (very small amount)

The large vegetables are just rough cut. Everything else gets dumped into the blender.
That's not too hard. Is it?

Blend to a pulp
Looks gross
Don't worry. Nobody's going to see it but you.

I went to the effort of cutting a whole chicken in two because I like the way it turns out.
You can use pieces

Put chicken and marinade in a ziplock bag
Let sit for a couple of hours
The longer the better - even overnight
If more than a couple of hours put into the fridge

Take out of bag and wipe of marinade
You can actually wash it off if you want ( I did that for a nice meal with pork cutlets earlier in the week) or you can just roughly get it off with your hands to leave more flavor on.

Cook as you would normally
I grilled these on the fire
You could pop then in the oven at 375 for an hour and you'd be fine

Easy, minimum cutting, forgiving of measuring, fast, lot's of flavor, open to creativity - give it a try.