Cilantro Lime Marinated Chicken

Cilantro Lime Marinate Chicken

I had a weird relationship with chicken dishes growing up. I would love to say that I ate chicken and loved it, but I didn't. My mother was a great cook, but she favored beef, pork and seafood. She only made a few chicken dishes and most of the chicken that we ate was fried. I'm not taking about great homemade fried chicken, shaked in a brown paper bag, with delicious crispy skin. What I'm taking about is the fried chicken from the grocery store counter. It always had a slightly off flavor (I am sure they reused their oil) and my parents loved it. I couldn't stand it. When I met my husband I almost didn't marry him when he told me that he loved fried chicken. Yuck, I couldn't handle even looking at it, much less eating it. I have tried a lot of great fried chicken over the years and many people have tried to convert me, but I am sorry to say that I still can't stomach it. The grease does me in the same way that pancakes at a greasy spoon do, my stomach just says no thanks. Since I married a man that is big on any type of chicken and my two boys will eat chicken dishes before much of anything else I have learned to compromise. I make a lot of chicken dishes, just not fried. Every couple of months my family (without me) goes out and has fried chicken, they are happy and I am too.

Tonight was a chicken night in my household. I love using marinades on chicken. It keeps the meat moist and adds flavor without being over powering. Tonight I tried a new recipe for Cilantro Lime Chicken from Redbook Magazine.

This recipe has 9 ingredients. It takes 1 hour of total time, 10 minutes of which is active and makes 4 servings. I only made a few changes to the original recipe. First I used a yellow onion. I already had a bag and didn't see the need to buy another bag of white onions when I would only use one. For the honey I am lucky enough that my husband's cousin raises bees and gave us a jar of homemade honey. If you have never had homemade honey, it is so much better than the honey from the grocery store. Plus if you have allergies local honey is supposed to help you be more resistant to pollen issues. I found that I needed to flip my chicken approximately once every ten minutes, so four times total during the baking time. The chicken tended to start to burn and stick to the foil without this step (I had used canola spray and it still stuck from the honey).

The flavor on this chicken was delicious. I would suggest a couple of changes. The skin didn't crisp as much as I would prefer. In order to change this I would either take off the skin (which would also save a significant amount of fat) or broil the chicken the last 5 minutes. This way the skin would have a crisp outside while maintaining the delicious cilantro-lime flavor. My kids loved this recipe and my youngest ate two legs all by himself (which is a ton for a 4 year old!). It is definitely kid friendly and a good way to introduce your kids to cilantro and jalapeño.

For the recipe go to Cilantro Lime Chicken.

Cilantro Lime Marinated Chicken

Recipe Type: Main

Summary:

A simple roasted chicken recipe with a Cilantro Lime Marinade. Can be made more or less spicy by seeding or leaving the seeds in the jalapeño.

Preparation Time: 0h, 10m

Total Time: 1h, 0m

Yield: Serves 4