Herbed Chicken Tenders

It's time to show you the lemony, herb chicken that I served with the Provençal Inspired Bread Pudding.  This is a cooking method, not a recipe.  To be honest with you this is a pretty common meal in our house. In the summer I grill the chicken and in the winter I bake it in the oven. I always make a double batch of this chicken. It is great cold the next day with some sandwich fixings or in a grilled panini, chopped up on a salad, tossed with some pasta for an easy dinner or even dipped in a little BBQ sauce.  I love that this recipe is so versatile, flavorful and easy.

The board of ingredients is pretty standard. I am using a dried herbs de Provence blend, but you could use a fresh blend of any herbs you like.  An important note is that you should always rinse poultry in water before you cook it.  If you are grilling the chicken I would recommend drying the chicken on a few sheets of paper towel.  If you are baking the chicken then you can leave the chicken wet.  The extra bit of water on the chicken helps the cooking  process a bit. 

Sprinkle the herbs de Provence over the chicken.  I am using probably three tablespoons of herbs for XX pounds of chicken tenders.  Adjust this to your own taste.  If you were going to use fresh herbs, I would use about a half cup of fresh herbs.  

Add the zest of two lemons, a pinch of salt {we will add more salt in a bit, but you do not want too much salt in the marinade}, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.  For this amount of chicken I used about a tablespoon of olive oil. 

Mix everything together making sure that the chicken is coated and the herbs and lemon zest is evenly distributed over the chicken.  Let the chicken rest for a few minutes to soak up those lovely lemon and herb flavors. 

When you are ready to cook the chicken, give it a last layer of flavor by adding another pinch of salt and some lemon juice.  You would not want to add these items to the marinade because the acidic lemon juice would cook the chicken and the salt would draw moisture out of the chicken and we do not like dry chicken. 

Once the lemon juice and salt has been added put the chicken in a roasting pan.  Or grill it.  Bake the chicken at 350 degrees for roughly twenty to thirty minutes. 

I forgot to take a picture of the chicken when it was still in the pan...but it looked just like this. 




Lemon Herb Chicken Tenders is part of this complete meal.  :-)