The Rain Notebook

Baked Herb Crusted Chicken

Ingredients:

chicken
herbs
spices
salt
olive oil
garlic

Okay so first off you get your chicken out and make sure it is defrosted. This recipe will work just perfect for a whole chicken too.

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Lay out your chicken in a roasting pan. Personally I love using my “seasoned” pan from Pampered Chef. Set it aside.

So here is the fun part, the herbs. These are dried herbs you want to use. They can be anything you want. Personally this is my favorite combination. If you don’t feel creative or don’t know the herb flavors use the following list.

basil
savory
oregano
dill (just a little)
rosemary
thyme

I use about 1 tsp each, except for dill. But it all is subject to your tastes, don’t be scared of the herbs!

If you are missing one of these don’t worry, it will taste good without it. Or substitute it with another flavor, the whole point of cooking is experimenting with what tastes good.

Put all your spices in a bowl to make sure that they get mixed well.

Don’t forget the salt! Add enough to flavor, not to over power. Usually just 1 tsp is enough.

Now one of my secret ingredients in this recipe is a herb/spice mixture from Safeway’s meat section. The name of it is Ultimate Steak seasoning and its awesome. Now of course you can make your own mixture with the following ingredients:

Kosher Salt
Natural Spices (of course they don’t tell you which ones) :P
Dehydrated Garlic
Dehydrated Onion

But for the sake of being easier I usually use their mixture.

Pour it into the bowl with the other herbs.

Make sure you mix all the spices and herbs together. You will notice I didn’t add pepper in this recipe, its because there was pepper in the Safeway mixture. If you don’t use their mixture, make sure to add pepper. Set the bowl aside.

Now we need some oil. I use olive oil because of the flavor.

Pour just a little bit of oil on each piece of chicken, letting the oil run down the sides of the chicken.

Looking good (yes even raw!) :P

Now we come to my favorite ingredient, Garlic!! Now I like a lot of garlic and especially for my baked chicken. Use as much as you like, I typically use 5-8 cloves depending on how much chicken I make. Now I recommend using fresh garlic not the jar kind. The flavor is so much better with fresh. But of course this is for you so if you do want to use it… I won’t come after you in your sleep. (or will I?) :)

If you have any trouble at all cutting and peeling garlic here are some tips. Cut off the tips of each clove.

Make a small cut on lengthwise on the clove of garlic.

Now the skin should be easy to peel right off.

Isn’t it so beautiful!!

You can dice or mince the garlic if you want to but I prefer to use the garlic press, its just way easier and I like easy!

Go ahead and press the garlic directly on the chicken. And use all of it… including the stuff that doesn’t get pressed through. Its all good!

Doesn’t it look fantastic? Go ahead and take a spoon and rub the garlic all around it, to cover the entire leg. Now if you were using a whole chicken for this recipe I recommend putting the garlic under the skin, for these smaller legs you don’t need to. The legs are so small that the flavors still penetrate through.

Now you sprinkle the herb/spice mixture you created earlier. Be generous with putting it on your chicken, this is what makes it taste so good.

I have to say I’ve been obsessed with this recipe for awhile. It is so good!

What you might want to do is add a little bit of water at the bottom of the dish so you can have some juices to put on your chicken when you’re done. That is entirely up to you.

For pictures sake I only used 6 legs… but since I am making this for us I’m going to fill the pan up. These taste great as leftovers.

My oven seems to take longer then others, so you need to keep that in mind. I put my chicken in for about an hour and a half. You probably would want start checking on it in about an hour. Once the chicken starts pulling away from the bone then they are done. I don’t cover my chicken because I like the skin to get crispy. You can always cover it with foil for the first 30 minutes and then uncover it for the last part, again entirely up to you.

So here is a delicious chicken dinner using only spices, herbs and olive oil. Who needs butter and other fatty ingredients? I hope you enjoy this easy and wonderfully yummy dish!