Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Best Recipe In The Entire World: Cuban Chicken

I grew up hating chicken. If you ever came to my house for dinner you would find yourself awaiting a meal of either (1) chicken and rice, or (2) chicken and potatoes. And my mom always cooked her chicken the same way every time- oven roasted. I began to associate chicken with bland, boring and repetative.

When I got older and had to start cooking for myself I realized that chicken, although I hated it, was the easiest and most versatile thing to cook with. There is so much you can do with chicken! I can't believe we had chicken prepared the same way for 18 years of my life when there were so mnay other options out there. Chicken with mangos and onions, chicken curry, chicken stuffed with cheese...and now I am proud to announce my very new favorite chicken recipe: Cuban Mojo Chicken!

I started to watch the food network when I run on the treadmill. Like all good foods, that channel is addicting! I just discovered this hilarious show called "Paula's Party" or something. It stars this old, large spunky woman with a southern accent who likes to dance. She's so wacky that she's kinda funny...anyway, on her show she had a recipe for cuban mojo chicken- which is chicken marinated in cuban sauce. I tried the recipe last night from what I could remember from watching the show.

The chicken was SO EASY to make, and it was INCREDIBLE. It was juicy and kinda spicey and perfect! Straight from a fancy restaurant's menu.

I tried the recipe out on my dad and my husband and they were both amazed. This recipe is definately a keeper. I will have to remember to make it next time I go to a party or a potluck. I don't have exact measurements for ingredients because I didn't write it down when I saw the show, but I think you can put in any amount of the ingredients according to your preferences and it will still be awesome.

From what I remember:

  • 1 yellow onion, minced
  • 6 garlic cloves, minced
  • 12 ounces of orange juice
  • 5 ounces of lime juice
  • 5 ounces of lemon juice
  • heaps of pepper (or ground peppercorn)
  • teaspoon of salt
  • cumin
  • oregano
  • garlic powder
  • fresh chopped parsley

Put all this together in a bowl and marinate boneless, skinless chicken breasts for a couple hours in the fridge. Then cook it all in a sauce pan over medium high heat until the chicken is done- about 30 minutes. The chicken was so full of flavor! And the sauce left in the pan is really good to spoon over more chicken or use to dip rolls in. It goes really well with pasta.

I challenge you to try this recipe, I promise you'll love it! To top it all off, this was the first time in a while that my smoke alarms haven't gone off while I was cooking! Why does that always happen?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You can't have Cuban food with pasta. You have to have cuban food with rice silly.