A few months ago, I had a vision: lemony broiled chicken, roasted vegetables, artichokes, olives, and feta cheese served with/over yellow rice. I put the dream into reality and it quickly became one of the family favorites. Now it’s been perfected enough for you. You’re welcome.
The whole thing. On a platter. In the middle of the table. Zorba would be impressed.
Badass “Greek” Chicken
Serves 4-6 Polacks
INGREDIENTS
- 2 lbs boneless, skinless, tasteless chicken breasts – cut into medium sized pieces
- Store-bought yellow rice kit, family size (16 oz is the right size)
- 3 Lemons
- 2 Red Bell Peppers
- 1 Red Onion
- Handful of cherry/grape tomatoes
- Handful of Kalamata olives
- $3 worth of Feta cheese
- 1 Can (15 oz) of quartered artichoke hearts, drained
- Oregano
- Salt & Pepper
- 1 Tbs Red wine vinegar
- 1+ Cup Olive oil
SUMMARY
This is one of those cook a bunch of things and assemble at the end kind of dishes. You’ll need to make the veggies, the chicken, the dressing, the rice, and then build. It’ll be great!
INSTRUCTIONS
Prepare the Lemons
This is a lemon-centric meal; let’s prepare those lemons the right way:
- Using your vegetable peeler, peel the rind from two lemons. Go from end to end, and try to achieve 1″ wide strips that are about 3″ long. Remember: the yellow part is flavorful, the white part (pith) is trash – try to just get the yellow. Don’t go apeshit, we only need a handful of strips.
- For all three lemons, juice. Get all the juice – be thorough!
- Discard the well-used lemon husks – or cut into smaller pieces and use to freshen-up your garbage disposal. Ah, lemon fresh.
Prepare the Vegetables
- Cut the red pepper into 1-2″ square pieces. I cut the four sides off the red peppers, then cut those into quarters.
- Cut the onion into similar sized pieces. I cut the onion into eight pieces – pole to pole. Then cut those in half.
- Dump the onions, peppers, cherry tomatoes, and lemon strips into a bowl and drizzle-on 1-2 Tbs of olive oil.
- Toss to combine.
- Done. Veggies prepped for roasting.
Prepare the Chicken
- Rinse and dry the chicken.
- Cut-off any weird parts that you wouldn’t eat (you know, the bony or fatty or odd-looking parts)
- Cut into ~2″ pieces – larger than bite-sized.
- Put chicken into a shallow baking dish. Add 1-2 Tbs olive oil, 1 Tbs salt, pepper to taste, and 1-2 tsp oregano. Toss to combine.
- Chicken prepped.
Prepare the Dressing
- In a bowl, dump lemon juice and 3x olive oil (this is the basic vinaigrette ratio: 3 parts olive oil to 1 part vinegar). So, if there’s 4 Tbs of lemon juice, add 12 Tbs olive oil. A typical lemon has 2 Tbs of juice, so if you did a good job, there should be ~6 Tbs of lemon juice, and you should add ~18 Tbs of olive oil – but we’re not out to make the perfect vinaigrette. Let’s just say, add 1 cup of olive oil – we’ll want the extra acid.
- Add ~1 Tbs red wine vinegar.
- Add 1-2 tsp oregano.
- Add salt & pepper to taste. Seriously, you need to taste.
- Whisk. Or, for you advanced cookers, use your buzz blender and emulsify the shit out of this. Oh, so nice. Warning: this will separate in a hurry, so you’ll have to emulsify again later.
- Done. Set-aside for later.
Let’s cook
- Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Dump prepared veggies and lemon strips onto a parchment lined sheet pan. Sprinkle ~1 Tbs of salt and pepper to taste and ~1-2 tsp of Oregano. Put in oven for ~40 minutes – until the vegetables take-on some roasted colors.
Here’s how you’ll know the veggies are done: they’ll be this color and out of focus
- Put pan of chicken into oven. Bake for 40 minutes. This is more than enough time, but in my house, the chicken must be DONE.
- Wait 20 minutes.
- Prepare the store-bought yellow rice kit per the instructions. Most rice kits take ~20 minutes to complete. If you want to make homemade rice, go for it. Use turmeric for the yellow color. I am not good at rice, and I’m ok with that.
- When the chicken and/or veggies are done, remove from oven and set aside. If the chicken is done early, cover lightly with a piece of foil – we’ll want the chicken to stay hot. The veggies can cool a bit.
Assembly
- When the rice is done, pour onto a large-ish serving dish. You’re going to build from rice on up.
Here, I put the artichokes on the rice. Whatever. Also, that’s the right size of feta.
- Place the chicken in and around the rice – be artsy about it.
- Place the roasted veggies in and around the chicken. Awww, yeah!
- Artichokes and olives. Add.
- Crumble-on the feta. It’ll break-apart into salty nuggets. Mmm, nugget.
- Pour half the dressing on the thing – or adjust to your liking, but half is right.
- Tell Alexa to play “traditional Greek music.”
- Eat. Then throw the dishes into the fireplace. It’s like Athens all up in here.
FAQs
- Is this authentic Greek? >> No clue. I know the Greeks like a shitload of oregano and lemon. Feels Greek to me.
- What’s with the red wine vinegar? >> Tastes good. What’s YOUR problem?
- Yellow rice kit. Are you serious? >> Yes. Like I said, I’m not good at rice – I’ll let the food manufacturers handle that for me while I focus on bigger things.
Store-bought rice kit. It’s fine.
- There are no measurements for oregano, salt, and pepper in the ingredients list. Is that deliberate? >> Yes. Oregano is in nearly every part of this dish. Each part needs “some” oregano. You can add those up and come-to an overall amount, but it’s not important. For salt & pepper, those are almost always “to taste” items.
Cook Like a Badass 