So, don’t know if anyone’s noticed but we’re in a recession. Also, food is expensive. Also, I live with my parents so they pay for my wonderful obsession. So I do my best to help out. Whenever I can I buy my own groceries, especially butter. I usually purchase my own butter for baking, it goes fast! My family’s really good about it and they rarely never complain. Still, lately I’ve tried to make things up using stuff we already in the house. I’ve literally gone through all of our nuts with my baking over the past week! Soon we will have to go buy more but there is still some usable material.
This brings me to the chicken. Every day my grandma tells me what meat is defrosted, I work with it. Looking around my fridge, I knew that I wanted to try something original and something that would taste good, and something I’d never done before. I want to learn new things and the best way to learn is to…practice! So in my fridge, the first thing I noticed was the pomegranate juice left over from the pomegranate martinis my parents made for mother’s day dinner.
One of the things I’ve learned over the past little while is the magic of the marinade. Common sense I know, but still. I’m new! So I made a quick marinade (there wasn’t too much time!) and added some red wine and honey to give it some dimension, hopefully. It only got to marinade for about 45 minutes and I know this affected the flavour. I gave it a bit of seasoning before putting in the oven and I don’t know if this made a difference but I think that marinading it overnight or at least 3-4 hours would make it even better. Everyone really enjoyed it, but I know it needs a little work. So if you try this, make sure you follow the general marinade rule of a few hours, I just wish I’d thought of it sooner!
Overall this is a fun recipe, and the chicken gets a nice colour from the purpleness of pomegranate juice and red wine. I do recommend this recipe and feel free to offer any suggestions, like maybe how to make a nice glaze for it?
Pomegranate Chicken
3 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 cup pomegranate juice
1/4 cup red wine (full bodied)
1/4 cup honey
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp each of basil and sage
salt and pepper
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Combine pomegranate juice, red wine, and honey and pour into a large ziploc (or any plastic bag) with the chicken, seal and marinate for 3-4 hours.
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When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 350 (check note at bottom), drizzle a pan with olive oil (not a sheet pan, deeper) and put it in the oven as it preheats.
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When ready to prepare, season the chicken with salt and pepper, and the herbs. Remove the pan from the oven and put the garlic in, stir around. Put the chicken in and place in the oven for 30-45 minutes.
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Enjoy!
*Note: Since this was my first time making it, I put it at 350 and waited about half an hour. It was still a little pink inside and I was in a bit of a rush so I put it up to 375. I think it would be fine to keep it at 375 the whole time and the cooking time would be shorter. Feel free to adjust as you need!
Great recipe. I need to use more pomegranate juice in my recipes. The chicken sounds delicious.
Pomegranate flavor sounds awesome for the chicken!
There’s a Persian chicken recipe that uses pomegranate molasses that is out of this world, and this recipe has some similar components. It sounds absolutely wonderful