Lemon Greek Chicken

Lemon Greek ChickenI received the Help Whip Cancer recipe card collection from PC today and man did I find a bunch of great recipes.  I’m trying one tonight for dinner, it’s Lemon Greek Chicken and I had EVERYTHING on hand.  Well, besides the veggies, but those are interchangeable in my opinion.

I did make a few changes to the recipe.  Not really because I felt the need to, but because it was what I had on hand.  First off, the recipe uses bone-in and skin-on chicken.  Neither of us are a fan of that and we have the frozen in the chicken in the freezer, so we didn’t use that.  Because of this, the chicken isn’t going to take a full hour to cook.  I initially put the chicken in for 35 minutes and then I’ll see if it needs to go longer.  Something I do with my chicken, that’ll make a difference, is I cut each breast in half.  So even though I only thawed 2 breasts, by cutting them in half, I have 4 thinner breasts.  It’s a little easier to cook since there isn’t so much chicken to heat and it actually saves money since we really don’t eat more than that and it’s enough for the 2.5 of us.

The other change I already mentioned is the lack of veggies.  I didn’t have any of them on hand (I need to go shopping), so the chicken is cooking without them.  I’m feeling like this will also cut back on the baking time, but the next time I make this, I’ll make sure to have the veggies so I’ll know for sure.

For the garlic, I added more than four.  Since garlic is so good for something trying to reduce their cholesterol, and since Jesse is trying to reduce his, I tend to add extra garlic.  I was also finishing up the clove, so all of the garlic were small pieces, so I want to say that I added 6 or 7 pieces.  At the moment, it is smelling really garlicky and Jesse is loving it.

The last changes I made involve the lemon.  I didn’t have any fresh on hand, but I did have lemon peel and lemon juice so I used those instead.  For the zest, according to the Ingredient Substitution chart, for 1-2 tsp of fresh lemon zest, you can substitute 1 tsp lemon peel, so that’s what I did.  The lemon juice is pretty much equivalent since they mention in the directions that they want 2 tbsp of juice, however, 1 lemon will generally give you about 3 tbsp of juice.

So those were my changes.  I’ll be back after dinner to update this and hopefully provide a picture.

After Dinner: Yeah, remember to follow the lemon measurements closely.  You can NOT add more lemon if you can’t smell it over the garlic, it is definitely there, so don’t worry.  I made that mistake tonight.  Since I added the additional garlic, and I couldn’t smell the lemon, I added a little more peel and juice and that was so not the thing to do.  It smelled really good, so I’m thinking if the lemon hadn’t been overpowering, it would have been really good.

We did find out that rice and the new Ginger-Wasabi sauce is really good together.

Ingredients:
3 lemons divided
1/4 cup olive oil
4 garlic cloves, pressed
1 tbsp dried oregano leaves
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 bone-in, skin on chicken breasts or boneless, skinless chicken
8 petite red potatoes
1 medium red bell pepper
1 medium red onion
8 oz white mushrooms

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Using a zester, zest two of the lemons to measure 1-1/2 tbsp zest. Juice one of the zested lemons using a juicer (or I actually use a stainless wire whisk) to measure 2 tbsp juice. In a bowl, combine zest, juice, oil, pressed garlic, oregano, salt and black pepper; mix well. Place chicken on center of a large bar pan (aka stoneware). Using a basting brush, brush the chicken with about 2 tbsp of the lemon juice mixture.
  2. Cut potatoes in half. Cut bell pepper into 1-in strips. Cut onion into 1-in wedges. Thinly slice remaining lemon using a mandoline fitted with v-shaped blade. Combine potatoes, bell pepper, onion, lemon slices and mushrooms with remaining lemon juice mixture in mixing bowl; toss to coat.
  3. Arrange vegetables around chicken on pan. Bake 1 hour or until the chicken registers 180 degrees F in thickest part of breast (with a thermometer), brushing chicken and vegetables with pan juices after 30 minutes.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info: Calories 630; Total Fat 35g; Saturated Fat 8g; Cholesterol 145mg; Carbohydrate 26g; Protein 51g; Sodium 590mg; Fiber 3g
US Diabetic exchanges per serving: 2 starch, 6-1/2 medium fat meat (2 carb)

April 3, 2009 · jackie · No Comments
Posted in: Chicken, Main Dishes

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