101 Ways to Cook Chicken

Chicken is the meat of choice at my house. It can be cooked so many different ways and although it will take me a very long time to post 101 ways to cook chicken, I'm going to give you two very good marinade recipes this week to add to your arsenal.

This recipe is inspired by a PW recipe that she calls Ranch Style Chicken. My version is slightly different because I left off the bacon and added a jalapeno cheese on top just before serving.

You will need the following:
Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts (duh), salt and pepper, crushed red peppers, smoked paprika, honey and dijon mustard. Not shown, but used: cheese, olive oil and I served this with rice cooked in beef broth.

After I defrosted the chicken breasts, I put them in a zip top bag and began adding the marinade.

To begin, add 1/2 cup Dijon or country/grainy mustard to the zip top bag.

1/2 cup honey.

1/4 teaspoon Smoked Paprika.

Just a pinch of hot red pepper flakes.

And 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Add the juice of half a lemon.

Mix, mix, mix...

Then I let this sit in a mixing bowl and put in fridge for a while. I fixed this in the morning and let it sit all day, then cooked at dinner time.

When it's time to make dinner, grab the olive oil or grapeseed oil (whatever is you want to saute with) and some cheese!

Add a tablespoon or two to your saucepan and get it hot over medium heat.

Using tongs, transfer the marinated chicken to your saucepan.

Let it get nice and brown on both sides.

PW used sharp cheddar cheese. I thought this jalapeno white cheddar would be really good melted on top of the chicken so I sliced it up thick and placed on top of our chicken breasts and put in the oven under the broiler for the cheese to get gooey and melty all over the chicken.

Meanwhile I made two servings of rice. Instant rice.

But I "fancied" it up by using beef broth instead of water for added flavor.

As you can see, the cheese didn't melt like I envisioned, but it did brown and soften a bit. Next time I would grate the cheese on top of the chicken and then put under the broiler.

This turned out to be a really nice balanced meal. The marinade added lots of great flavor and kept the chicken really moist while it cooked on the stove. Stay tuned, I have another chicken marinade to post later this week - Santa Fe Chicken by Oprah!