Whenever I ask my son Oliver what I should make for dinner he generally responds “Rosemary Chicken.” I’d think he would be sick of it, but he isn’t. He said to tell you that this chicken is fantastic!
The truth is that I used to feel resistant to making this because I hated flattening chicken breasts, which is the secret to their tenderness. I’m sure you all know about raw chicken, salmonella, and the clean-up requirements. My good friend Kathy coined the term “chicken death” about 25 years ago when referring to the threat posed by raw chicken. So chicken pounding was quite an ordeal. Chicken death splattered from cutting board to counter and beyond.
That all changed with the invention of my painless chicken pounding technique – the plastic garbage bag. I dump the boneless, skinless breasts into a clean waiting plastic garbage bag, roll up the bag end, and put the bag on the counter. The bag is thin enough that you can feel the chicken pieces perfectly and gauge their thinness while flattening them. I pound them one at a time and shove the flat ones over. When they’re all flattened, I dump them from bag into waiting bowl and throw away the bag. No chicken death anywhere.
I use a meat pounder (flat side not the pokey side) to flatten the chicken. You can also use the flat side of a hammer.
Oliver says: “You’ll love this chicken as much as I do!”
- 1 1/2 cups olive oil (does not need to be best quality)
- 3/4 cups red wine or apple cider vinegar
- 2/3 cup dijon mustard
- 3/4 cup fresh chopped rosemary
- 2 onions, cut in half and sliced about 1/8" thick
- 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- Marinate:
- In a bowl large enough to hold the chicken, add olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and rosemary. Whisk marinade until thoroughly combined.
- Put onions in another bowl large enough to stir some of the marinade into them. Add about 1/4 of the marinade. Stir onions to coat. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
- Cut each chicken breast in half. Pound chicken until it is flattened to about 1/4 inch thick. See description in recipe blurb for my preferred method. Put chicken into the marinade bowl and stir to throughly coat chicken with marinade. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours or overnight.
- Cook the onions:
- Preheat oven to broil and set oven rack in the top 1/4 of oven. Spread onions with their marinade on a large, rimmed baking sheet. Broil onions, turning as they brown, until caramelized and nicely browned. Turn broiler off and cover onions with foil to keep warm.
- Cook the chicken:
- The chicken tastes great grilled. If that's not an option, broiling works well too.
- Grill the chicken: cook chicken on a very hot grill. This only takes a few minutes per side since the chicken is thin. Do not overcook.
- or Broil the chicken: place chicken on broiler pan or baking sheet and broil, in upper 1/4 of oven, until cooked through. Turn once.
- Serve immediately with browned onions on top.
