Keeping It Easy

Lemon Grilled Chicken

This week has been a "recovery" week for me. Recovery from a very busy September. Recovery from driving by myself on two long trips last week. Recovery from sinus problems. Recovery from watching too much news, It's times like these that I don't particularly want to cook. But our eating out options are limited.

We do have one very good barbecue restaurant in the closest town. We popped in there for lunch last Saturday after I got home from my trip. In addition to eating there, I brought home some of their smoky chicken salad and their Brunswick stew for us to enjoy later. That's one way for us to "eat out" without driving back into town.

But I've searched through the recipes here (check out the Recipe Index at the top of this post) for easy recipes I may have forgotten about. This lemon marinated chicken is super quick and always a hit.

The chicken does not need to be marinated all day. The original recipe said not to leave it in the lemon marinade for longer than an hour or the chicken will get mushy, but this time things happened and it was an hour and a half before it hit the grill. It was fine. Now that gives me even more flexibility. I put the extra grilled cutlets in the freezer* for later. They are great sliced on a salad. Or, chopped up and added to soup. The lemon flavor is not overwhelming. It just makes flavorful chicken.

LEMON GRILLED CHICKEN

1 cup lemon juice (I used bottled juice for ease)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons lemon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
6-8 boneless skinless chicken cutlets 

Whisk marinade ingredients together. Put chicken in a gallon ziplock bag. Pour marinade over chicken and let it marinate for 1 to 1-1/2 hour  in the refrigerator. (Not longer.) Remove chicken from marinade. Grill until chicken is done. Outdoor grill or grill pan—they both work.


The last time I posted this recipe, I wrote about using chicken breasts—which is fine—and pounding them to make them thinner. Using the cutlets just eliminates that step. That's my choice when I can find them. Right now I'm all about making things easier.


*Meats frozen "dry," without a sauce or gravy or broth, will not keep as long as those protected by lots of liquid in the bag with the meat. Note to self: Use this sooner rather than later.