Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen I want to share with
you a really delicious and simple marinade that you can make for the entire Spring and
Summer season, it is what I call my Greek chicken marinade.
You can do this on chicken thighs, you can do this on chicken breast, you can do this
on shrimp, you just wouldn't want to marinate the shrimp or any kind of fish for a long
time because there's acid so you want to marinate it for 5 to 10 minutes and then go ahead and
pop it on the grill.
But it would be delicious, I'm going to share with you chicken breast today because it happens
to be what I have on hand, this works just as good if not better with boneless skinless
chicken thighs.
So let me run you through the list of ingredients, it's very short and sweet, kind of like me,
you need your chicken breast of course, I've got about a pound and a half, make sure they're
not too thin or otherwise, too thin they'll dry out, too thick they won't cook all the
way through evenly.
Then here I've got dried oregano, dried basil, and some dill weed, I've got lemon, garlic,
Dijon mustard, fresh chopped dill, and I've got some onion, you also need red wine vinegar,
you need some olive oil, and some salt.
So, let's get going.
I'm going to use my mortal and pestle here because what I want to do is I want to grind
up my dried herbs because there's so much of it, if I don't then I feel like you get
really dry pieces of the herbs on the outside of the chicken and it's not really pleasant
to me.
But if this doesn't bother you, then you can skip this step.
What I do is I kind of grind it up in here.
Just till it's about half, see it's like really really coarse?
I want half of it to be almost pulverized, then the other half can stay pretty whole.
That is what I want, and what's really amazing as well, when you do this with any ind of
dried herbs and spices, it brings them to life, it almost like opens them up, it smells
outrageously good in here and all we did is grind up my basil, oregano and dill weed.
But that is what I want, pop that in there.
Now, for the garlic and the onion, I don't want chunks of this because I don't want this
to burn on the grill, and I also kind of want that to be part of the marinade, so I use
a coarse grater, and I just grate them in there.
You can just chop them really finely by hand, it's fine, no worry, I use two cloves of garlic
for a pound and a half which is pretty garlicky but I feel like that's sort of like what makes
it, you know what I mean?
I've never been to a Greek restaurant and not had a very garlicky anything, like everything
is super garlicky which is what I like.
And then I take a half of a small onion and I do the same thing, I kind of just grate
it right in there.
Add your Dijon mustard and your fresh chopped dill.
Whoo!
My eyes are like on fire.
And then you need lemon juice.
You need lemon juice and red wine vinegar.
Combo of both is what makes this so good.
Along with some extra virgin olive oil.
Use regular olive oil or extra virgin whatever you fancy.
And like I said, this would be equally if not more delicious on chicken thighs.
Just saying.
Plus, boneless skinless chicken thighs are half the price and twice the flavor of chicken
breast, so always keep that in mind.
It just happens to be what I have on hand and you know me I waste nothing.
And whatever you see is what we eat here on Laura in the Kitchen so when mamma's got fresh
chicken breast on hand, that's what I'm gonna use.
I'm going to add a good pinch of salt that way it's got a good chance for the salt to
really marinate the chicken.
This is the thickness of the breast, you see I would say they're about a half an inch thick,
maybe a little bit bigger maybe about an inch thick.
Any thicker than that, then I feel like they wouldn't cook properly, and any thinner they
would just dry out.
Coat that in that really beautiful marinade.
And I am just going to pop this into the fridge for several hours.
Like I said if you were doing this with fish, which is delicious on shrimp or any sturdy
fish that you can grill, you just would not want to do this for hours, you would want
to do this for maybe ten minutes, otherwise the acid would cook your fish and it would
turn into ceviche which is delicious but not the point of this.
So I'm going to cover this up, I'm going to pop this in the fridge for a few hours and
then I'll show you when it goes on the grill.
My chicken was on the grill for about three to four minutes on each side, you just have
to keep an eye on the thickness of your chicken, you want to make sure that it doesn't overcook.
And now I want to show you how I am going to serve it because I think it makes this
really special and I think if you've got people coming over last minute and you don't want
to make a big production and make a bunch of different courses, I think you can make
just this, serve it with some warm pita, maybe a glass of chilled white wine and it would
be perfection.
I love picky foods like antipasti, something like that I love it.
So let me show you what I've got here on my board.
I've got some beautiful tomatoes, I've got hummus, I've got chunks of really good feta,
cucumbers, I've got olives, I've got a little pepperoncini, and I just sprinkled them with
some dill, salt and pepper, really really excellent quality extra virgin olive oil and
I also have some tzatziki as well, which I love to serve with the chicken.
You can do this with pita, you can put all of this on top of a salad, but I think that
the entire thing together is absolutely a money maker and everybody would love it, and
you could feed a lot of people on a pound and a half of chicken, which is always a bonus
in my opinion.
I mean the chicken is so, look how juicy.
Right?
It's so perfectly cooked.
It tastes like a million and a half bucks.
That's a number.
And it's everything that you want from a good grilled chicken.
Minimal effort.
Maximum pleasure.
Maximum flavor.
And that is what I am all about, especially around this time of year where you've got
people dropping over unannounced a lot and you want to make something really delicious
and really easy, and you don't want to make yourself crazy, and these are also things
that you can have on hand as well, use some store bought hummus, use store bought tzatziki
if you want to.
But I think that is pretty perfect, scatter some lemon wedges around because I personally
really love that with dill and cucumber and tomato and chicken, phenomenal.
You've got a dinner that everybody will remember, hopefully they don't remember it too well
because they'll come over the next night.
Ha ha!
I'm going to take this piece of chicken.
LauraintheKitchen.com for the written recipe, hope you enjoyed spending time with me, I'll
see you next time.
Bye!