3.6.09

Lazy Man's Chicken


You know when you get home from work, want a cooked meal, but you have about 4 ingredients and no time? That's where this dish comes in. It's totally a lazy weekday meal. Take a mediocre amount of planning, and some thievery, but we'll get to that in a second. It's....

BBQ Citrus Chicken.

This is seriously a great summer dish, and would be awesome on the grill. And... it's so simple!! Probably one of the simplest dishes in my head, but oh so good. I don't even remember where I got this... and I don't exactly take measurements. Onto the food!

You will need:
- some sort of citrus-y juice
- BBQ sauce
- whatever part of the chicken you heart best (i used chicken boob)
- salt, pepper
- a bit of oil for the pan/grill
- oranges (optional)

The thing that makes this dish great is that it's so easy, and yet the chicken comes out juicy and flavorful every time. The trick is in the marinade. It's all about marinade, baby.

To start, you'll need... this!


Start by putting the chicken in a ziplock bag. I used 2 chicken breasts so I can have leftovers for lunch.


Then, add about 1/2 - 1 cup of orange juice. Now, I didn't have any orange juice. So if you're like me, you'll steal your roommates orange pineapple juice. Stealing is good for the soul, and makes a hell of a marinade.


After that's done, put in around 1/2 - 1 cup of BBQ sauce.



Squish everything together, so that the chicken is evenly coated. Throw it in the fridge and forgeddabouddit. I would suggest at least an hour. What I did was put this all together the night before (takes about 4 minutes) and ate my cake and went to bed. When I got home from work today, these babies were defrosted, super flavorful, and ready to go on the grill.


So when you're ready to grill these, take them out of the bag and get rid of the marinade. You don't want to use it for basting or anything because it's got all the raw chicken juices in there. Yechhhh. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper on each side.

Now, at this point it's really cool if you don't live in a basement, and you have a grill. However, for us poor suckers who live in tiny basement apartments, I can't tell you how much I love my new grill pan (thanks mom)! It gets beautiful char marks on the food and almost makes me think I'm outside. If you have a grill pan (just a skillet would work fine too), pour just a bit of olive oil on it and spread it around. This will make the chicken not stick to the pan.


Throw those suckers on there and let 'em have it. My stove was on medium heat. They were probably on the grill about 5-6 minutes each side, since I'm paranoid about chicken not being fully cooked.

I didn't get a picture of it, but I basted each side with just the plain BBQ sauce, just for some more flavor. If you want to get really fancy schmancy you can cut up an orange and grill those too for presentation - the char of the grill will make all the natural sugars carmelize. However, being as the title of this post is lazy man's chicken, I decided to go with the spirit of the post and not do it.

One thing I did realize was that man cannot eat chicken alone. I made a quick salad! I used these ingredients, since I thought they would be nice with the pineapple-orange flavors of the chicken.


If you can't tell, that's grapes, romaine, pineapple chunks, blueberries, a golden delicious apple, and feta cheese. You can basically throw in any fruit you've got and it would be fine. This would be devine with strawberries, maybe with pecans or almonds for some crunch.

In a perfect world, I would have poppyseed dressing to throw on top of this. However, Courtzilla is not perfect, and I think I ate it all in a drunk stupor. So, I had to substitute with some raspberry pecan dressing, which was still scrumptious. I mean, just look at it.


Once your chicken is done, throw that on the side, and VOILA! Lazy man's dinner.



This is kind of a crappy shot, but I was too busy eating to get another one. I had some leftover corn bread that I had on the side with a bit of butter. It was delicious, and took about 15 minutes to throw together. How's that for a meal?

<3 Courtzilla

4 comments:

  1. Dear Courtzilla.
    I request you teach us how to make a baked pasta dish. Any of those in yo arsenal? Maybe a ziti w/some form of meat?

    Signed,
    Hungry from Purdue

    ReplyDelete
  2. Presentation needs a little work but looks delicious anyway. Love the thievery part. Do you want us to send you tried and true recipe ideas for your site?

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  3. Hungry from Purdue, I've got just the ticket. I also have a killer bolognese sauce, no big deal.

    Bon, that would be faboo. Send me the butter tarts recipe again too, I have misplaced it. SEE!? This is why I need this thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Ree... I mean Court!
    You're so crafty. I love it.

    ReplyDelete