Doctor Domestic

I came upon this recipe from “Pithy and Cleaver” in my handy Google Reader and decided immediately I had to try it.  I just looked so simple and good!  And who can’t use another recipe for chicken?

This weekend at the farmer’s market I happened to stop by a booth that was selling fresh, natural chicken.  Normally I wouldn’t buy chicken like this strictly because of the price.  We just don’t have the budget to splurge on local, organic meat.  Although I’ve read enough books to make me quite leery of mass produced meat, but if that’s what you can afford, that’s what you can afford.  So I splurged and got the chicken.  And for 4 nice chicken thighs it was a bit over $7.  If you put that in the context of how much we’d spend going out to eat, pretty much anywhere, even fast food, we’d spend more than that for a meal for 2.  So all in all, not a bad buy.

The recipe itself is quite light, so you shouldn’t feel bad about using chicken with the skin still on.  The sauce consists of citrus juice, zest, honey and some spices.

The recipe only calls for the zest of the orange, not the lime.  But I didn’t notice that until after I’d made the sauce.  Oh well, it certainly didn’t hurt anything!  Simply coat the chicken with the sauce in an oven-safe baking dish.  Bake 35-45 minutes at 425F, until the meat is done.  Unfortunately I think I overcooked mine.  Its way to easy to overcook chicken!

I really can’t cook meat without my probe thermometer anymore.  Be sure to take your chicken’s temperature before you dig in.  Cook to ~165-170F.  You may read that you should cook chicken to 180F.  That’s applicable if you’d also like to be able to use your chicken to floss your teeth with after dinner.

I just served it up with a side of mashed potatoes.  I asked Greg if he wanted some steamed broccoli on the side.  Why do I even ask that?  Do I enjoy seeing that look of disgust on my husband’s face?  I just get to feeling so guilty about the lack of green veggies on our plates.  I may just start photo-shopping in a serving of broccoli here and there to give the appearance that we’re not such terrible people.

Click the above link for the recipe.

Prep Ranking: #2 – Weeknight Fare
Tastiness Grade: 7.5/10 – great flavor, a bit over done and not a lot of meat on the chicken thighs!

Tags: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Spicy