Sugar Turned On Me

The difference between a good dish and the waste of an ingredient most often comes down to preparation and seasoning. As and example, there is a staple item in my house’s diet, a recipe developed by my wife that could be expressed, in it’s simplest form, thusly:

4-6 Chicken Breasts
Seasonings

Nothing could be easier, right? But as I’m shooting for being informative, I’ll elaborate.

The seasonings in question are salt, pepper, sometimes a low sodium soy sauce and always our house spice rub: paprika, italian seasonings, onion powder, and a dash of cayenne. This goes on a great deal of what we eat. It works for pork, beef, and vegetables. A few shakes of it can mean the difference between an enjoyable meal and passable one.

The above combination is not set in stone. The important thing is to find a combination of spices that you enjoy that you can keep on hand for quick access.

The other key ingredient is the preparation. The goal with chicken breast is to remember that there’s not a lot of fat in it (which may be why you’re eating it) and that means that it’s easy to turn into something between rubber and leather with little effort. The goal is to keep it juicy, which is accomplished by pan roasting it. I’ll detail this below in a more thorough recitation of the recipe.

3-4 Chicken breasts thawed or fresh, skin removed.
Salt
Pepper
Low Sodium soy sauce
The above house spices or your own blend
Olive oil

1) Lay your chicken out on some wax paper. Drizzle with olive oil, just enough to coat the outside.
2) Add your spice rub, salt and pepper. Add a couple of squirts of soy sauce, but not enough that you wash off the spices.
3) Flip each piece over with tongs and repeat steps one and two.
4) Get out a skillet that will also go in the oven. Add some a little olive oil and heat the pan on high. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350.
5) Once the pan is hot, place the chicken skin-side-if-you-hadn’t-removed-it up in the pan and let it cook for about a minute or three until the outside has bits of golden brown color.
6) Flip it over and sear that side too.
7) Place the whole pan into the oven and leave for 6-8 minutes or so letting the chicken cook through.
Take the chicken out and let it rest for a couple of minutes. Serve. Leftovers make good salad toppings too.

This recipe is as much a demonstration of technique as a presentation of a dish. You could use pork chops instead of chicken and get much the same results. And if you need to cook at home, say because you’re diabetic and want to control what goes into your food, the way to make that a good things is to start building a vocabulary of kitchen skills that will translate to most anything you want to put on a plate.

Simple food can be good. It doesn’t need to be boring. And not being boring is all in the details.

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