Tasty Tuesday’s are all about food! I am really excited to share this recipe with you! I was having company over for dinner, and I kept thinking about how good my brine was for pork, so I decided to try it with chicken! Ready to head into the kitchen?
Brine Ingredients
8 cups of water
1/3 cup of salt – a heaping cup
1/3 cup of sugar – also heaping
1 TBS black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
6 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 lemon, juiced and reserve the rind
1 TBS lemon pepper
1 tsp dry rosemary
8 cups of ice cubes
Get out a non-reactive pot and add the water. Then add in all but the ice cubes. Stir it up to help dissolve the lemon pepper. Don’t worry at this point about the salt and sugar.
Turn the burner on to medium high heat and bring this to a boil.
Let this cook for about 5 minutes. The idea here is to get the salt and the sugar to dissolve into the mix. The flavors will intensify a bit too.
As this is boiling, place your ice cubes and the lemon halves into a very large bowl. After the brine has cooked for the 5 minutes, turn off the heat and pour the mixture over the ice cubes.
What we are doing here is cooling down the mixture. Stir this up until the mixture has cooled. You can test this with your finger. There will be enough brine here to use on a whole cut up chicken. Not being able to find one of these in our grocery store I used 5 chicken legs and 4 thighs.
Next, take the chicken pieces and add to a gallon zipper bag. Then pour the brine over the chicken. You will need to recruit some help with this step. Once the brine is in the bag with the chicken, remove as much air as possible. Here is what my bag looks like.
Now, stick this in the refrigerator for two hours. Turn the bag several times as it sits.
I made oven fried chicken with this meat. I drained the bag, and took the pieces individually and dusted them in flour. Then I dunked them into beaten eggs. Next the chicken pieces went into a bag of flour mixed with garlic powder, paprika and a bit of lemon pepper. I let the pieces sit for about a half hour on a wire rack. Then I baked the chicken for a good hour, turning half way through at 350 degrees.
When you brine the chicken, the flavors of the peppercorn, garlic, rosemary and lemon pepper get sucked into the meat by way of the salt, which breaks down the chicken. The addition of the sugar is the help the chicken pieces caramelize a bit during baking.
Here is what the chicken looked like when it was done.
The flavors of the chicken were extraordinary! You can also use this brine if you are planning on making Dijon Chicken! Please let me know if you try this simple brine!
Thanks for joining me in the kitchen today! I hope to see you back next week for another incredible Tasty Tuesday dish! Be well… ^..^
Ooops!
Posted in Commentary, tagged Chicken, Comfort Food, Cooking, Garlic, Life in the Foothills, Nature, Photography, Recipes on April 20, 2015| 8 Comments »
I was working on a post for tomorrow and accidentally hit the publish button rather than save…Pardon the hiccup and stay tuned for tomorrow’s Tasty Tuesday post!
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