Best Chicken Marinade

My last post was shortly after I joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed back in February. You'd have thought that I would have had more time for blogging since then, but that hasn't been the case.

Losing one income has forced us to rethink a lot of our expenses, and one of our strategies for saving money has been to reduce the amount of heat that we generate inside the house during the summer, which helps us save money by reducing our air conditioning load. There are three main ways that we've done this - drying our laundry outdoors (we live in the high desert, so this really makes sense for us), running our dishwasher with the "no heat dry" option, and cooking outside on the grill as much as possible. NOTE: The laundry and dishwashing saves us about $15 per month despite having some of the lowest electric rates in the nation, plus our clothes dryer and dishwasher will last a lot longer, saving us even more money in the long run.


Another strategy for saving money is buying bulk packages of meat, despite cooking for only two.


The latter caused us to find ways to tenderize the meat, as we'd be reheating much of it for later meals. So, we tried a number of marinade recipes, especially for chicken. We've found that those that contain a lot of oil can cause flame out and smoke problems, as well as gunk up the bottom of the grill (though we've found several that result in great chicken). Our favorite marinade uses a lemon and yogurt base, which we discovered by trying this great recipe. Though the recipe suggests sauteing or baking, it also works great on the grill, even when using a hot grill, which is often the best way to make bad chicken. The marinade makes the chicken very moist and tender and the spices give it a lot of interest. We've also subsituted Cavender's Greek Seasoning for the suggested spices with great results.


For a four pound package of boneless chicken breasts we use the following base for our marinade, based upon the recipe link in the preceding paragraph:

1 cup non-fat plain yogurt
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried lemon peel or lemon extract, or 2 teaspoons of lemon zest if using fresh lemons for your lemon juice

From there, add your favorite Mediterranean spice combinations. We generally start with a hot grill and turn the heat down to low as we get ready to add the chicken. For our grill, that means about 7 to 10 minutes per side, depending on the size of the chicken breasts. We cut into the center of the breasts to check for doneness before pulling them off of the grill.