Home-Cooked: Baked Chicken with Lemon Pepper Salt

I've been really busy at work & also spending more time experimenting of various dishes, plus I'm slightly too lazy to blog of late, so I've been MIA for 2 weeks. So sorry! I'll share the recipes & experiences more promptly :)

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Baking chicken or making 1-pot/pan meals is really easy that everyone could do it without much problems. You'll have less to clean up & you can get a wholesome, delicious, & healthy home-cooked meal with less hassle.

Since I've posted it on FB, many people have shown interest in doing this themselves & were asking me for tips, recipe, instructions...etc. Frankly speaking, there isn't any set recipe that I follow, but I'll give a rough estimation of what I did that evening. It's very similar to one of the recipes that I've shared on my blog 2 years ago :) The one difference is that I pre-cooked the vegetables to speed up the overall baking time & to ensure that I don't end up having semi-raw tasting vegetables.

Ingredients:

• Pieces of chicken [up to you how many pieces & how large each piece is; I would recommend having the chicken pieces to be 1/8 of the whole chicken as it’ll cook faster than a whole chicken] I just had 6 pieces of chicken, so the recipe is catered for this amount
• 2 cups brocolli, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 cup baby carrots/carrots, macedoine/large-diced/cut into sticks
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, cut into wedges only after it's half-cooked (see instruction of pre-cooking vegetables below)
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled & crushed (depends on how 'garlicy' you like your dish to taste)
• 1 medium-size yellow/red onion, peeled & cut into '6 sections'
• 1 packet of brown Shimeji mushrooms
• 1/2 cup water

Seasoning:

• 2 tbsp cooking oil/olive oil
• 1 ½ tsp rosemary [I used dry rosemary]
• 1 ½ tbsp lemon-pepper salt [If you don't have lemon pepper salt, you can use juice of half a lemon + slices of that half lemon, 1 tsp of crushed black pepper, 2 tsps of salt - these are ALL my approximates only yea?]
• 1 tsp/ 3-4 dashes of L&P sauce
• 1 tbsp whisky

Equipment:

• Electric oven
• Non-stick baking tray
• Aluminum foil
• Tablespoon/kitchen tongs
• Small pot that could fit all the potatoes/vegetables

A. Marinating the chicken
1. Wash the chicken pieces under running tap water.
2. Drain the chicken pieces & place it in a bowl.
3. Gently cut the pieces of chicken to make slight ‘incisions’ on each piece of chicken. [This will allow you to roughly determine if the chicken is cooked or not later as well as allows greater absorption of the seasoning]
4. Place all the ingredients in the Seasoning section above into the bowl with the chicken pieces.
5. With your hands or a spatula, mix all the seasoning onto the pieces of chicken, ensuring that each piece of chicken is 'well-coated' with the seasoning.
6. Allow the chicken pieces to “rest” & be marinated for at least 10-15 minutes 'til half a day (or better still over-night).

B. Pre-cooking/blanching the vegetables (just before you want to bake your chicken)
1. Bring a pot of water to boil.
2. Once the water is boiled, place the potatoes (whole) into the pot of boiling water. (same high heat/flame on the stove)
3. After approximately 10 minutes of boiling, add in the carrots & allow to cook for approx 3-5 minutes ('til it's half-cooked, not overly soft/fully cooked).
4. Remove the carrots from the pot, leaving the potatoes still cooking in there. Place the strained/drained carrots into the baking tray.
6. Add the broccoli & onions. Blanch for 1- not more than 2 minutes only ('til the broccoli looks deep/bright green, but not soft yet).
7. Remove the broccoli & onions from the pot. Place the strained/drained onions into the baking tray. As for the broccoli, if you're lazy, you can just add it to the baking tray as well. If you want your broccoli to still look nice & green with the baked chicken later, add the broccoli 5 minute before the chicken turns 'brown'.
8. Remove the potatoes from the pot as well.
9. Cut the strained/drained potatoes into wedges.
10. Place the strained/drained potatoes into the baking tray.
11. Season the half-cooked vegetables with some lemon-pepper salt.

C. Baking the chicken with the vegetables
1. Add the marinated chicken (once it's done 'marinating') into the baking tray. Mix well with the rest of the vegetables so that the vegetables are also nicely coated with the same marination.
2. Add in the crushed cloves of garlic & brown Shimeji mushrooms as well.
3. Add the 1/2 cup water into the baking tray.
4. Cover the baking pan with an aluminum foil.
5. Bake the at 200°C for approximately 25 minutes.
6. Remove the pan from the oven & remove the aluminum foil.
7. Continue baking the vegetables & chicken pieces at 200°C for 5- 10 minutes or until the chicken pieces are fully cooked/brown. [The incisions on the chicken should have “opened like an open-wound” or you could use a fork/knife to poke through the chicken pieces. If the fork/knife could fully go through the chicken pieces, the chicken is cooked. If not, you’ll need to cook it longer; it depends on the size of your pieces of chicken]
8. Turning the pan to ensure the chicken skin is evenly roasted ‘til golden brown & crispy.
Optional: Add more water (1 tbsp at a time) onto the vegetables in case it burns or becomes too dry for your liking.
9. Remove the pan from the oven & serve hot! It'll be tasty enough on its own :)

I took this photo before turning the baking tray/pan & popped it back into the oven so that the drumsticks will bake nicely like the thighs.

It's so simple & if you use disposable baking trays like what I used, you will have 1 less dish to wash as well :D


Healthy & delicious!