This meal is the foodie trifecta—it’s easy, it’s healthy, and it will “wow” your taste buds. Plus, the food and wine pairing options are almost endless.
I buy skinless chicken pieces to save time and temptation. We all know that grilled chicken skin tastes amazing, so I don’t even want to put those cardiologist-not-approved calories on my radar. The skinless legs grill faster than skin-on pieces and are much healthier. You can use breasts or thighs, but my husband loves the caveman feel of gnawing on a bone, so we have this meal quite often. I like the way grilled chicken pairs with a smoky red wine, so I’m all-in on this weekly meal.
The most important part of the chicken preparation is the marinade. For the chicken to have the flavorful juiciness that makes this so good, you have to marinate the meat for several hours. It’s okay to let it marinade overnight, so if you want to make it tonight and then grill it tomorrow night, the chicken will just get better.
When making a marinate you need a few things:
- A Brine—This can be salt & water or soy sauce.
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil—The oil helps coat the meat, making it extra moist and juicy.
- Worcestershire—This gives your marinade the umami taste, one of the five things you taste in your mouth (along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter).
- Acidity—Vinegar, wine or lemon break down the fibers, making it more tender
- Garlic—This is your flavor bomb.
- Herbs—Pepper, oregano, thyme, rosemary, and other herbs give chicken much-needed flavor.
- Something Sweet—Honey, maple syrup or brown sugar
- Smoke—If you are cooking on a gas grill, a few dashes of Liquid Smoke will give your chicken the charcoal taste you love without the fuss and mess.
Grilled chicken can pair with so many different sides, but in my effort to eat healthy, I save the fat-laden sides like mashed potatoes or cream corn for holidays. Thanks to my air fryer, I can make home fries with all the taste and a fraction of the fat. Because of this, I’d addicted to cooking potatoes in my air fryer.
For years I cooked home fries in the oven, like most of you probably do. I still do that from time to time, especially since I can make a huge pile of them and feed the gaggle of people who hover about my kitchen. Unfortunately, home fries don’t turn out well unless they’re completely coated in olive oil. This means that taste and health are at odds with the oven method. My second option is to spritz the tiniest bit of olive oil on a small batch of home fries that I cook in my air fryer and have in intimate evening dining in with my honey bunny. If you’ve seen what my husband looks like, you know that I’m usually wanting the second option. But he’s Latin, so romantic just-the-two-of-us dining is more rare than truffles in a soup kitchen.
When cooking home fries in the air fryer, I like to keep them 1-2 potatoes deep. Some of the air fryer photos I see have potatoes to top of the basket, but I don’t think they cook as crisply when you do this. I spray them with a bit of extra virgin olive oil from a kitchen spray bottle, and then season them with salt, pepper and rosemary. Then I cook them at 390 degrees for about 22-25 minutes. I like them really crispy, so I tend to go longer rather than shorter.
The third item on my plate is grape tomatoes with fresh basil and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I like grape tomatoes because they are naturally sweet, which means they don’t need salt, pepper, oil, or anything else to make them taste delicious.
You could pair this meal with any medium-bodied red wine, but I wanted to find food and wine pairing nirvana. I paired it with a 2014 Hartford Old Vine Zinfandel from the Russian River Valley in California. The big black fruit combined with the smoke and black pepper made my mouth light up when I paired it with the chicken.
Whatever red wine you pair it with, find something with jammy black fruit, black pepper, and smoke or tobacco. If you don’t know a wine firsthand, lookup the tasting notes. The best part about wine is experimenting!
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
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