I have found that every store focuses on boneless, skinless chicken breasts when offering chicken for sale. Large lot sales usually involve boneless skinless chicken breasts, and you can often find price matching or sales pricing. But the thing is, boneless skinless chicken breast is often dry, tasteless, and well, a bit like chewing on sawdust. My favourite cut of chicken is bone in, skin on breasts, which roast up beautifully and retain so much more moisture, flavour, and texture. I was pleased to see bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts at Costco on my last shopping trip.
I also came across some really well priced boneless, skinless chicken breasts, so rather than miss out on a good deal, I decided to marinate a few breasts to make a concoction of my own devising – Lemon, Honey, and Fresh Herb Marinated Chicken Breasts. This is quite lemony, so if the idea of lemon and chicken doesn’t sound right in your brain, this might not be the recipe for you. We regularly put a lemon in the cavity of a roasting chicken so this makes sense to me. This light, bright, citrusy marinate also feature a generous amount of local honey, and a big giant handful of fresh herbs out of my garden. I can also see this working nicely on white fish. When roasted, the chicken will sweeten as the honey caramelizes a bit, but the herbs will infuse flavour into the meat making cardboard-y skinless boneless chicken breasts into a nice addition to the meal plan.
The flavour is strong enough that this would be nice with some rice or quinoa, and a mild and sweet veggie such as a roasted butternut squash.
Lemon, Honey, and Fresh Herb Marinated Chicken
Ingredients:
This is for about one serving of 3 or four large chicken breasts. Adjust accordingly.
- 4 T of local honey, liquified. My honey is not pasteurized and so it keeps hardening up. I simply put the container in a warm bowl of water and let it heat up. You can also pop in the microwave if you have one.
- juice of one lemon, and some zest
- a fresh handful of each: rosemary, sage, chives, tarragon, basil and oregano. Use what you have, don’t fret with the mix. Tarragon on its own is lovely with chicken.
Method:
- Put all the ingredients into your food processor. I don’t have an actual food processor, just a mini chopper thing. If you don’t have either device, you can hand mince the herbs with a knife and brisky stir all of the ingredients together in a bowl so that the honey and lemon are well blended.
- Pour enough marinade to thoroughly coat into a freezer bag with the raw chicken and squoosh it around so that it is well coated. Remove as much air as possible and freeze until you are ready to use.