- In today's video, (soft upbeat music)
I'm going to show you
how to make a quick lemon chicken marinade.
Now, what I love about this recipe,
is that it comes together really quickly,
and your chicken only needs to sit and marinate
for 20 minutes.
And then you can go cook it,
and it'll be super lemony and delicious.
Let's get started.
You're going to want a container to hold your marinade,
and I'm using a zip bag so you can see what's in it.
And this is an easy way when you're cooking solo,
to have someone, or a bowl,
assist with holding your bag open.
So, the first thing I'm going to add to my bag is olive oil.
I grew up in Spain, and this is an easy lemon marinade,
that my grandmother would make.
Lemon and olive oil, garlic,
they're like the three main ingredients and a staple
in a lot of my recipes.
Now, I want to make this really lemony and zesty,
so I'm just going to take a lemon that I washed up,
and I'm going to zest it right in my bag.
You want to zest just a little bit of your skin,
not so much of the white.
The white tends to be a little bit bitter.
Just give it a quick scrape right over the zester,
and keep turning your lemon.
As with any zester, a lot of it,
it's going to end up at the bottom,
so you're going to want to make sure to scrape that,
right into your bag,
not miss out on any lemon flavor.
Up next, I'm adding lemon juice to our marinade.
Now, this lemon is at room temperature,
and you're going to want your lemons at room temperature,
so that you can extract the most amount of juice.
Now, if you just took it out of the fridge,
and it's still cold,
put it in your microwave for about 10 seconds,
and then give it a roll to release the juices of your lemon,
and then you will slice it and put it right into the bag.
Oh. (bag squishing)
- Nice. - Nice.
Not the lemon. (laughs)
Put the lemon juice right into the bag.
Pits and all,
you're not gonna be using this marinade for anything,
you can just put it straight in there.
To our marinade, I'm going to add a garlic.
If I had a whole garlic clove,
I would just grate it right inside, but I don't.
So,
I always keep one of these garlic paste things in my fridge.
For quick marinades and recipes, they save the day.
So, you can also do that.
And to our garlic, olive oil, lemon, we put in some oregano.
Again, this is straight out of my grandmother's kitchen.
All this stuff we always had in there.
Salt. You always want to salt your proteins.
I just put it right into my marinade.
It helps tenderize the chicken meat.
And pepper. (pepper grinding)
Okay, so this is what our marinade looks like in our bag.
All the ingredients are in there.
So, you can whisk it, (bag squishing)
or you can give it a shake like that,
so that when you put in your chicken,
it all gets covered with all the seasonings.
Keeping our baggie back open,
I've got some chicken breasts that I'm going to add
to our marinade bag, just like this.
I typically only marinade chicken breasts,
because they tend to be the driest,
and least flavorful part of the chicken.
But I guess you could marinade drumsticks and thighs,
any part of the chicken, really.
All right, so we take our bag, (bag rustling)
and you kind of want to release some of the air,
and zip it close.
And you're going to want to give it a good shake like this,
to spread your marinade into your chicken breasts.
(bag rustling)
Now, to cook these, super simple,
you're going to want to fold this over,
and marinade this for 20 minutes in your refrigerator.
And then you can get cooking.
Here is a quick meal prep tip for you.
Grab a few of these zip bags,
and buy your chicken breasts in bulk,
which tend to be more affordable,
and prep your marinade,
and then zip them, place them like this,
and freeze your chicken, straight in the marinade.
When you want a quick and easy meal,
you're just gonna pull these and cook them,
right on the pan,
and there's no waiting, and dinner is ready in your freezer.
After 20 minutes,
our chicken is now full of that garlic lemon flavor.
This is a quick and easy marinade I use in my meal plans,
often.
And if you have no idea what my meal plans are,
there is going to be a link right below this video,
where you can download a sample with five dinners,
a meal plan for the week, a prep list,
where I'll tell you exactly what to do,
just like this recipe, and a done-for-you shopping list.
So, all those details and the measurements to this recipe,
right below.
And if you want to see how I pan-fry this chicken,
there is another video on this channel,
where I cover how to pan-fry these chicken breasts,
and make them super juicy and delicious.
So, check that out,
and I'll see you guys next time.
(soft upbeat music)