Learning to Cook Chicken

I never really was into chicken - eating it and certainly not cooking it. I was a vegetarian for ten years, from age 12 to 22, so when I really started cooking myself, I wasn't cooking meat. Even after I started eating meat , I still didn't cook it very often, and I almost never cooked chicken.

However, I've been on a major cooking kick lately and have been cooking more and more for my family. My husband LOVES chicken. He eats it almost nightly, so I've been learning to cook chicken and have been glad to be able to feed us free range, organic chicken, rather than having him pick up take out chicken for himself on a nightly basis.

So, I'm going to dedicate a few posts to chicken - the meat I used to fear (and not like very much) that I have discovered I do like - when I cook it.

To start, I'm going to share an easy, oven-based chicken preparation inspired by the preparation used in Jamie Oliver's Proper Chicken Caesar Salad. This chicken is very good (and very easy) and there are basically just four ingredients. Instead of an ingredient list, I'm just going to put ingredients in all caps.

1. Take 4-6 CHICKEN THIGHS (I used boneless, skinless thighs) and season, lightly, with sea salt and black pepper.

2. Take SOURDOUGH, FRENCH BREAD OR CIABATTA (day old or fresh works fine) and tear into bite-sized pieces (enough to line your baking pan).

3. Line a baking pan (that has been sprayed with cooking spray) with the torn bread and lay chicken thighs on top of the bread.

4. Drizzle with OLIVE OIL and mix the olive oil around (so that it gets on the thighs and bread). After mixing the olive oil, make sure the thighs are resting back on top of the bread.

5. Cook chicken (and bread underneath) at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.

6. Top chicken with PANCETTA and cook for an additional 15-20 minutes.

The result is delicious chicken. The bread is perfect as croutons tossed in a salad and the pancetta is great tossed in your salad as well (tear the pancetta into smaller pieces).

I used this chicken in a Caesar salad (that I also put the bread/croutons and pancetta in).

On another night, I prepared chicken the same way, but this time used chicken breast tenders and ended up cutting up the chicken and using it as a pizza topping (for delicious chicken pesto pizza) and I put the pancetta and croutons into a side garden salad to go with the pizza.

Yum. Yum. Yum. Easy. Easy. Easy.

I'm starting to think I don't have to hate chicken -- eating it or cooking it and love having control over the type of chicken our family eats.