12 July 2011

Greek-style chicken

Greek-style, applied to food, usually means marinated, cooked, or served in olive oil and lemon juice. That's how this chicken is marinated and cooked. I made it with wings, but you could also use other chicken parts or a whole chicken cut into serving pieces.

Wings marinated and spread out on parchment paper for baking...

Since we found that would could buy chicken wings at the supermarket for a good price a couple of years ago, we've cooked them in many ways and styles — Buffalo, Yakitori, Tandoori, Vietnamese, and so on. They've all been good. I've noticed that some of the poultry vendors in the markets around Saint-Aignan have started selling wings, either raw (usually in a marinade) or already cooked.

...and after cooking for about 40 minutes in a medium oven

Twice, recently, I've marinated and cooked wings or other chicken parts Greek-style. The last time was last Friday for our Tour de France potluck picnic — which we ended up having to have indoors — and they were about the best. Here's the recipe.

Greek-style Chicken

½ cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1 tsp. hot red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
3 or 4 lbs. chicken parts
In a glass dish, mix the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, hot red pepper flakes, lemon juice, and half a dozen strips of lemon zest. If you use dried herbs, just use a teaspoon of each. Place the chicken pieces in the mixture, toss, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.

Cook the chicken on a grill or in the oven at 180ºC/350ºF for 30 or as long as 60 minutes, basting it with the leftover marinade frequently. The cooking time will vary according to the size of the chicken pieces you are cooking.

If you cook the chicken in the oven, you can save the lemony, herby cooking liquid or oil. Strain the it and use it to season cooked vegetables or fry potatoes in it, for example.
Too many wings, but the leftovers will be good

If you make extra wings, the way I did, you can keep them in the refrigerator and easily reheat them in the oven or even in the microwave before you serve them. Eat them with your fingers, of course. I wouldn't advise trying to eat them with a knife and fork.

Chicken wings for a picnic

If you cook a whole cut-up chicken, or legs or thighs, you can serve them as part of a more traditional meal, with knives and forks. That's what I would do in France, at least with people "of a certain age" like me. It's not very French to pick up foods with your fingers, except bread and apéritif snacks like potato chips and slices of saucisson sec.

P.S. It's raining this morning, with lightning and thunder. Let's hope it rains all day, and all day tomorrow.

12 comments:

  1. On Saturday, I adlibbed based on your description of the marinade last week. I had some frozen chicken thighs, so I just poured the marinade into the bag and and let the chicken defrost overnight in the marindade. It was delicious.

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  2. sounds great, and fits South Beach too.

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  3. Merci Ken

    I was going to ask for the recipe and looks like you read my mind.

    I will make some this week so that we can enjoy them with a salad . We are going through a muggy and above average week (>30C).

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  4. i dont think u should re-use the oil that raw chicken has been sitting in

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  5. I stole the Greek-style Chicken recipe. As I told Walt, it rained most of the morning here, but the sun is out now.

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  6. Melinda, I'm talking about keeping and re-using the oil that has cooked in the oven with the chicken. No, you wouldn't want to keep uncooked oil that has had chicken marinated in it.

    Cook the oil and the marinade ingredients in it, whether with the chicken or separately, before you strain it and put it away in the fridge. Then it will be safe to keep and it's got good flavor.

    The Beaver, Ellen, Kristi, :^)

    Starman, it rained here early this morning but the afternoon has been sunny. We are expecting more rain overnight.

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  7. I'm glad you posted this. I used to marinate chicken all the time, but somehow forgot about doing it over the years. I'll try this delicious sounding recipe soon.

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  8. There's a restaurant near my parents' home in Athens, GA, called Locos that specializes in chicken wings. Our favorite flavor is called "lemon yaki." I haven't been able to figure out the recipe yet nor have I found it on the internet. But lemon yaki wings are yummy! Yours look pretty awesome, too. I'll have to try them. Thanks.

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  9. Ginny, do you think your lemon yaki chicken could be a combination of Greek and Japanese cuisine? I'm thinking of chicken teriyaki. Maybe you could look for something along this line.

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  10. No word verification any longer ????

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  11. Ginny, here's one idea for making "lemon yaki" chicken. I'm not sure what lemon pepper is, and I'm sure I can't get the Kikkoman Teriyaki Baste & Glaze here, but maybe you can.

    CHM, I turned off WV as an experiment, just to see how much spam I might get. Blogger now has a filter that spends spam comments into a special folder where I can review them.

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  12. Thanks, Ken. Don't know how I missed that when I was searching. :)

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