The Marinade That Made Me Love Chicken Again

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with chicken. While I know it's a great source of lean protein, sometimes chicken just doesn't do it for me. I think my indifference hearkens back to a dark period of my youth known as "Thursday Night Baked Chicken."

Now, I grew up in a meat-and-potatoes household. No onion, garlic clove, or green pepper ever passed the threshold of our house. It took moving away and going to college to learn the joys of Mexican food (or rather, "Mexican Food," since I'm referring to Taco Bell), and other spicy delicacies. At home, flavoring was limited to salt, pepper, and gravy.

Once my sister, brother, and I were all in school and my Mom went back to work, we pitched in to make sure dinner was on the table each night. That's where I learned the basics of cooking, and found out that I really enjoy  the whole process.

After school each day, I'd call my Mom at work and she'd tell me what I needed to do to get dinner ready. For some reason or another, Thursday night was inevitably chicken night, and here are the instructions I was to follow:

- Find pan.
- Find chicken.
- Take chicken out of package and place in pan.
- Put pan in oven.
- Cook on 350 degrees for two hours.
- Enjoy your dry, tasteless chicken!

Lest I sound like an ungrateful, critical child, let me tell you that we have discussed "Thursday Night Baked Chicken" at length as a family and have come to an agreement that it was not our finest culinary hour. The other six days of the week we ate phenomenally, and my Mom is a great cook.

But ever since then, I have been chicken-shy. Beyond dousing chicken breasts with copious amounts of barbecue sauce, I had never found a marinade or reliable method of cooking chicken that would yield consistently great results.

But then I found a recipe for this fantastic marinade! Even though it's called herb lemon marinade, I would not say that it's overly herb-y or lemon-y. I can't even really describe the taste, except for that for some reason chicken breasts in this marinade come out so juicy and fantastic.

Even the leftovers retain the juiciness and flavor. I usually use any leftover chicken breasts for barbecue chicken pizza (yum).

So, try this out. I think you'll like it!

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Herb-Lemon Marinade for Chicken (from Cook's Illustrated)
Marinate boneless, skinless chicken breasts for no less than 30 minutes and no more than one hour.

• 3 TB olive oil
• 1 TB minced fresh herbs, such as chives or basil -- I've also used dried basil
• 1 TB lemon juice
• 2 medium garlic cloves
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. table salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 TB water

Whisk ingredients in medium bowl. Place marinade and chicken in gallon-sized zip-lock bag; press out as much air as possible and seal bag. Refrigerate and flip bag halfway through to ensure chicken marinates evenly.