Grilled Lemon Chicken

This is one of my favorite grilled chicken recipes. It’s easy, it’s delicious, and I almost always have the ingredients I need on hand. I even have bags of this chicken already in the marinade in my freezer, ready to pull out and defrost for dinner the next night.

For some reason, I thought I already had pictures of the how-to process for the marinade on my computer already, but I’m crazy and didn’t. So unfortunately that part of the process is pictureless. I’m terribly sorry about that.

Luckily, making this marinade is super easy! Just combine olive oil, lemon juice, Montreal Steak Seasoning (I put that stuff on EVERYTHING. From vegetables to steaks, and everything in between.), Italian seasoning, lemon pepper, kosher salt, roughly chopped onions, and minced garlic in a gallon sized plastic baggy. That is it. Told ya it’s easy.

Then just cut a couple of chicken breasts in half… Oh gosh. I’ve spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how to verbalize this. You’re going to butterfly them, but cut all the way through, so you end up with two, thin, separate pieces of chicken. No need to pound it, though. Does this make sense? If it doesn’t, just cut it however you please. I like it this way because it makes nice, thin pieces that absorb lots of flavor.

Phew. I’m sorry to have put you through that. Now throw the chicken breasts, however you ended up cutting them, into the bag with the marinade and let them sit for at least 8 hours, up to 48. I like to let them sit overnight.

One of the downsides of living in an apartment, as I’m sure many of you know, is not having a yard. And not having a yard means not having a barbecue. And this is a very, very sad thing, especially because I grew up on grilled food.

For a while, I tried using a counter top grill (e.g., George Foreman Grill). It did it’s job, but those grills are a pain in the arse to clean, so I hardly ever used it. So last year, I invested in a cast iron grill pan. And I ain’t never goin’ back.

They’re super easy to clean- just scrape the gunk off and rinse with hot water. You aren’t even allowed to use soap. And they still give you that hot-off-the-grill feeling. I love, love, love my grill pan.

Enough of that. But seriously, buy a grill pan. But anyways. Throw those well-marinaded chicken breasts onto the grill pan, and give them 6 or so minutes on each side. Make sure the grill pan is nice ‘n hot so you get nice grill marks.

Then serve ’em up with some fresh veggies (maybe grilled as well?) and a nice cold beer, perhaps a Deschutes Red Chair NWPA, as I had. It’s Boyfriend and I’s favorite as of late.

This chicken is so tasty. Boyfriend hates chicken because he’s super weird, but he will eat this and enjoy it. And it’s on the low-cal side, so it’ll help you out with any presummer weight loss plans. Or just regular summer tasty barbecue plans.