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Chimichurri Sauce may not be a sauce you are familiar with. Its a lovely lush and spicy sauce which hails from Argentina.
Its deliciously created from fresh herbs, vinegar, seasonings, red pepper flakes and plenty of garlic, and there is not much it doesn't go with!
Today I created Chimichurri chicken breast, but it goes with all sorts of grilled meats. Steak is a real favorite with me as well!
I adapted this recipe from one found in the cookbook entitled Seriously Simple, by Diane Rossen Worthington. Its a great book filled with lovely seriously simple recipes. I really enjoy my copy.
Most require nothing more than simple ingredients, cooking methods and cooking equipment. Simple flavors and foods done really well in a very simple way.
It doesn't get much better than that in my opinion!
Of course the star of this is the chimichurri recipe. Such a simple sauce, but the flavors are just wowza! I am sure once you have made it and tasted it, you will be able to think of all sorts of applications for it.
It is not only great as a sauce, but makes an excellent marinade as this recipe today expertly illustrates!
You do need to be fond of garlic however and a little bit of sauce goes a very long way as it is rather spicy. Because the garlic isn't cooked it has a bit of a bite! But trust me when I say it totally works just as is!
Diane says that the sauce got its name from the legend that British laborers working in Argentina saw bowls of this sauce and would say, "Give me curry," which over the years evolved into (as things do) "Chimichurri!" Makes sense to me!
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO MAKE CHIMICHURRI SAUCE
First of all, the most important ingredient here is the food processor. You could use a mortar and pestle as well if you have one, but you can't beat a food processor for its ease of preparation!
- garlic cloves, peeled
- flat leaf parsley
- olive oil
- white wine vinegar
- water or chicken broth
- dried oregano
- dried parsley
- salt and pepper
- red pepper flakes (crushed chilies)
HOW TO MAKE CHIMICHURRI SAUCE
Nothing could be easier, especially with a food processor.
You will need to puree the garlic first. Simply peel it and pop it into the food processor. You then pulse it until it is very fine or as fine as you can get it. You then add the parsley leaves and pulse until they are finely chopped.
The original recipe called for a whole bunch of flat leaf parsley, just the leaves. I used approximately 1/2 a bunch, and yes, stripped the leaves from the stems. It doesn't really take that long.
Once you have the garlic and parsley minced, it is a simple matter of whisking in the remaining ingredients. You can also give them a quick whisk in by pulsing them in a few times in the food processor.
That's it your marinade and sauce is done! Do taste it to make sure you have enough seasoning.
HOW TO CUT UP A WHOLE CHICKEN
Cutting up your own chicken is a lot cheaper than buying store cut chicken and its really easy to do if you have a sharp boning knife and a set of kitchen scissors.
1. Lay the bird on its back. Wiggle a wing to determine where the joint attaches to the breast. To separate the wing from the breast, use a sharp knife to cut through the ball joint where it meets the breast. Repeat with the other wing.
2.Pull a leg away from the body to see where it attaches. To remove the whole leg, first cut through the skin between the thigh and the breast.
3. Continue to pull on the leg and wiggle it a bit to determine where the thigh meets the socket in the back. Use a boning knife or paring knife to cut through that joint. Repeat with the other leg.
4. Place each leg skin-side down. With your hand and knife, bend the leg to feel for the ball joint. That's where the drumstick and thigh are connected. Then, look for the thin line of fat that runs along the ball joint. Cut through the line of fat to separate the thigh and drumstick. Wiggle the joint as needed so it's easy to cut. Repeat with the other leg. I often just keep the thigh and drumstick together as a chicken quarter joint. Its up to you.
5. To remove the backbone, start at the head end of the bird and cut through the rib cage on one side of the backbone with kitchen shears or a sharp knife. Repeat on the other side of the backbone to remove it completely. (I like to reserve the backbone and neck for chicken stock.)
6.Now cut the breast into two halves. Place the breast skin-side down. To protect your hand, fold a kitchen towel and place it on top of a heavy, sharp knife. Use your weight to cut through the breast bone and cartilage down the center of the breast.
7. Now that you have two breast halves, if you think they are overly large, you can cut each breast half in half again, crosswise. The wishbone is located at the thick part of the breast. If you want, you can tease the meat away from the two pieces of wishbone using your hands and/or a sharp knife to scrape the meat from the bone.
The first time you cut up your own chicken it can be a bit intimidating, but once you have done it you will see how easy it is and each time you do it, it becomes that much easier.
It just makes sense to cut up your own when chicken is so expensive to buy already cut up. Why not line your own pockets with the cash rather than the grocery shop's!
I marinated and grilled skin on chicken breasts for this and I did push a bit of the marinade in between the skin and the breast as well when I was marinating them. This really got the flavors right in there.
You can use the chimichurri sauce on any cut of chicken however, so don't limit yourself. If you prefer thighs, then use them! I would do them boneless as well. I do like to keep the skin on when grilling as it helps to keep the chicken from drying out too much.
In any case I hope you will try this simple and delicious recipe. I would serve these with some lovely boiled and crushed potatoes and a vegetable on the side, or even rice. Something that will absorb all of those tasty juices! 😋
Grilled Chicken Breasts with Chimichurri Sauce
Yield: 2
Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 20 Mininactive time: 30 MinTotal time: 1 Hour
A wonderfully herby garlic sauce serves as both marinade and condiment to these delicious grilled chicken breasts. Amounts are for two, but can be doubled or tripled. You will need a food processor to make the sauce.
Ingredients
For the sauce and marinade:
- 5 cloves garlic, peeled
- a large handful of flat-leaf parsley, leaves only
- 1/3 cup (80ml) olive oil
- 2 TBS white wine vinegar
- 2 TBS water or chicken broth
- 1/3 tsp dried oregano
- 1/3 tsp dried basil
- pinch of red pepper flakes
- salt and black pepper to taste
For the chicken:
- Two skin on boneless chicken breasts
- 1 1/2 TBS of the chimichurri sauce
- 1 TBS olive oil
Instructions
- First make the chimichurri sauce. You will need a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the garlic cloves and puree. Add the parsley and chop finely. Add the oil, vinegar, water or broth and seasonings. Process to blend. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. It will be garlicky and spicy.
- Combine 1 1/2 TBS of the sauce with the olive oil in a bowl. Add the chicken breast to the bowl, turning to coat them. Marinate for half an hour at room temperature. (Alternately they can marinate, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours.)
- Preheat an outdoor grill, a grill pan, or an electric grill for medium heat grilling.
- Remove the chicken from the marinade and place onto the grill, presentation side down (skin side). Grill for 7 to 10 minutes. Flip over and grill for a further 7 to 10 minutes, until the chicken juices run clear. Timings depend on the size and thickness of your chicken breasts.
- Serve the breasts hot with the sauce on the side, ready for drizzling over them.
Notes:
This very versatile sauce goes with grilled steaks, lamb, pork or fish. It will keep for a few days, covered, in the refrigerator, but the parsley will not be as brightly coloured.
I am in the process of testing side dishes for the up and coming holidays and this week I really wanted to try this recipe I found in a book by Diana Henry. The name of the book is Pure Simple Cooking.
It is filled to overflowing with an abundance of simple recipes which require very few ingredients and not a lot of effort. When you are talking holiday meals, any recipe which meets those requirements is a plus for me!
I adore onions. They are quite simply one of my favorite vegetables and they go really well with roasts of any kind! Turkey, beef, chicken, lamb, pork, even ham.
These delectable onions would be a perfect side dish with any one of those meats. And when I say delectable, I mean delectable. These onions simply melt in the mouth.
Are you the person who always wants to pig out on that onion which has roasted in the middle of your roast chicken? (and who isn't!) If so, then this recipe is built just for you!
I don't know why I am always amazed when such simple ingredients and techniques come out crazy delicious. I shouldn't be. We all know its the simple things in life which bring us the most pleasure after all!
Caramelized onions are one of my favorite things to eat, but they are rather time consuming and you do have to keep a close watch on them. Worth the effort, but still . . .
When you are cooking a roast dinner you have plenty of other things to do, without having to babysit a skillet of onions! With a tiny bit of prep, these quite simply cook themselves! Easy peasy!
As you all know by now, I am a no fuss no muss kind of a girl. You can call it lazy if you want to, but the truth is I like recipes that can get me in and out of the kitchen with little or no effort.
Yes, they have to taste delicious, but recipes that cook themselves? Sign me up!
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO MAKE MELTING ONIONS
Very simple ingredients are needed to make these onions and you only need four ingredients.
- medium sized brown onions, skins on
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
- salted butter
HOW DO YOU MAKE MELTING ONIONS
Nothing could be easier to make. With just a tiny bit of prep, these can be in the oven and roasting in no time at all.
First of all you will need six medium sized brown onions. By brown onion I mean onions with brown skins. You need to do a bit of prep on them, but not a lot.
Wash them really well and dry them and then trim all those hairy bits from the root end. You can just cut them off as close to the root as possible. You want essentially to make sure that the root end stays intact.
Although it is not essential you will also want to trim a bit from the stem end of the onion. I like to cut a thin slice from the top, discarding it.
You then need to make a deep cross cut down the height of the onion towards the root end, only going down 3/4 of the way.
Make sure you don't cut them all the way through the bottom. You want them to stay together.
You then rub them all over with some extra virgin olive oil. This is when you want an oil with some flavor, so extra virgin olive oil is perfect. You will also be seasoning them with some salt and pepper.
I like to use fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Once you have rubbed and seasoned them you need to pop them into a roasting dish that is small enough to hold them all snugly in a single layer.
This helps to keep them intact during the long roasting time. I used a 6 inch cake tin because I was only roasting 3 onions today for testing purposes.
They are then covered tightly with some more foil and popped into a moderately hot oven. (375*F/190*C) Initially they need to roast for a fairly long period of time. 70 minutes.
But essentially, they are cooking themselves. You can just walk away and get on with whatever else you need to be doing.
At the end of the that time you remove from the oven and add some butter. Just plain salted butter.
I cut it into slivers and inserted it into the cuts of the onions so that the flavor gets right in there.
Back into the oven they go for another 25 minutes, until that butter gets all nut brown and golden and the onions get to the point where they really do melt in the mouth.
You will need to baste them a couple of times with the melted butter. Not a problem. The end result is something that brings pure and simple taste satisfaction.
You can also turn these delectable little morsels . . . cheesy melted onions . . . by adding some grated strong cheddar cheese and popping them back into the oven just long enough for the cheese to melt.
Cheese and onion are perfect partners and this makes for a fabulous finish for what is essentially one of the simplest and most delicious sides dishes you could ever put together. I highly recommend!
PS - Do caution your guests to peel off the skins prior to eating. The onions slip out of them very easily. This tiny bit of hassle is well worth it. Trust me on this.
Melting Onions
Yield: 6 as a side dish (can easily be halved)
Prep time: 8 MinCook time: 1 H & 32 MTotal time: 1 H & 40 M
These will be the star of the show! These delicious onions melt in your mouth.
Ingredients
- 6 medium onions, skins left on
- 1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil
- salt and black pepper to taste
- 1/4 cup (60g) salted butter
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375*F/190*C/gas mark 5. Have ready a baking dish that you can fit all the onions in upright, snugly.
- Carefully trim the bizarre bits from the root end of the onion, leaving the root and skins intact. Trim a sliver from the other end as well. Make a cross cut into each onion 3/4 of the way down the height of the onion, taking care not to cut all the way to the bottom.
- Rub the onions all over with the oil, season with salt and pepper and then fit snugly into a small ovenproof dish. Cover tightly with aluminum foil.
- Roast for 70 minutes. Uncover. Divide the butter amongst the onions, sliding it down into the centers. Bake for a further 25 minutes, basting them with the melted butter a few times. Serve at once.
Notes:
You can turn these into melting onions with cheese by adding some grated or cut strong cheddar (about 6 ounces) and stuffing it into the centers of each onion when done. Return to the oven just until the cheese has melted. Delicious!
You can also add herbs to these. Fresh thyme leaves are especially nice.
This has to be my favorite apple pie of all time, I kid you not! It is the best apple pie recipe and I think you best prepare yourself now to fall in love because I am pretty certain you will do just that!
The original recipe comes from an old recipe book of mine entitled Food that Really Schmecks, Mennonite Cooking by Edna Staebler, published in 1968.
I remember taking a copy of the book out of the library when I was a very young mother and living in London, Ontario. I painstakingly copied some of the recipes out into my Big Blue Binder. This would have been back in the early 1980's.
I eventually purchased a copy for myself many years later. It is a wonderful example of Canadian Mennonite Cooking, written by Edna Staebler who grew up in Waterloo county in Ontario, Canada, at the very heart of Canadian Mennonite Country.
I have been to the area many, many times myself. The farm market in Kitchener is fabulous and filled with an abundance of Mennonite cooking and quilts, meats, etc.
I also have been to Saint Jacobs many times, which is a very Mennonite town. We used to love to eat at a Mennonite Restaurant called Anna Mae's in Millbank which is in the same area.
I have eaten there many times and in my opinion it was the best home cooking you could get in a restaurant outside of a home! Everything was delicious. They have a different special every night of the week, along with their special Broasted Chicken, and of course the pies are to die for.
If you ever happen to have a chance to visit it and eat there, I highly recommend. Be sure to bring along a hearty appetite because they will be rolling you out of there!
Mennonites are known for being excellent cooks. I am not surprised. They are very similar to the Amish in origin and life style. We lived not too far from Mennonite country and often saw them in their horse and buggies.
Anyways, this pie is one of the best apple pies you could ever want to bake and to eat, and its very simple as well.
Schnitz usually refers to dried apples, but in this case it refers simply to sliced apples. I don't want to start any arguments here. I know people can be very pedantic about terminology, etc.
I am only giving you the name by which it is listed in the book. A rose by any other name and all that.
This is a single crust pie, composed of a delicious streusel crumb that is used in three separate ways. First as a base in the bottom of the crust beneath the apples.
Second mixed into sour cream or cream as a creamy custard that gets poured over the apples, and finally, third as a cinnamon streusel topping that gets sprinkled over top of the pie before baking.
There is nothing extraordinary called for her, unless you consider cream or sour cream to be extraordinary.
For me they are just staples and something which I always have in my kitchen. It is the same with buttermilk and plain yogurt. Trust me when I tell you that they always, always get used!
You will want to use a nice all rounder when it comes to apples. Today I used some Gravensteins that are now coming into crop.
The Gravenstein apple is one of the earliest croppers when it comes to apples in Nova Scotia. They are great all rounders making for both great eating and great cooking. Firm, crisp and juicy.
As you can tell they hold their shape well in cooking. They are also generally quite large. I used one and a half for this pie.
The other half I ate out of hand and it was delicious! Best apple I have eaten in a while. Not long since being picked I am sure. I bought them at Goucher's farm market on Friday.
I had forgotten just how delicious fresh picked apples are. My first husband's family were farmers. They had orchards as well as chickens, eggs, lamb, beef cattle, and farmed vegetables as well for the local processing plant.
My late Mother In Law knew what to do with all of these things and she did it really well. Nothing was wasted. I learned a lot from her. Lois was a real treasure. She passed away a few years ago at the age of 100.
Normally I would make my own pastry for this but had a really busy day today so used a frozen pie crust. A Tenderflake crust. They are the best when it comes to ready crusts here in Canada.
Normally I would make my Butter & Lard Pastry. It is the best, flakiest pastry you could ever want in a pie, single or double, sweet or savory. Trust me on this.
*Butter-Lard Pastry*
Makes 2 nine - inch crusts
Makes 2 nine - inch crusts
Printable Recipe
This is a beautiful pastry. Flaky just right. You can add a touch of sugar to it if you are making a fruit pie.
2 cups all purpose flour (280g)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter (76g)
1/3 cup lard (or white vegetable shortening) (74g)
5 to 6 tablespoons of ice water
(note: if using for a sweet pie, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar.)
Mix flour with salt, and cut in butter and lard, until you have pieces of fat in the flour about the size of peas. Add ice water, one TBS at a time, tossing it in with a fork until pastry comes together. Form in to a ball and cut in two pieces. Form each into a round flat disc. Warp in cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour.
This is a beautiful pastry. Flaky just right. You can add a touch of sugar to it if you are making a fruit pie.
2 cups all purpose flour (280g)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter (76g)
1/3 cup lard (or white vegetable shortening) (74g)
5 to 6 tablespoons of ice water
(note: if using for a sweet pie, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar.)
Mix flour with salt, and cut in butter and lard, until you have pieces of fat in the flour about the size of peas. Add ice water, one TBS at a time, tossing it in with a fork until pastry comes together. Form in to a ball and cut in two pieces. Form each into a round flat disc. Warp in cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour.
When the children were growing up, I always, ALWAYS had to make one of these for Thanksgiving along with the traditional Pumpkin Pie. The family loved it.
I also loved it. I would cut you a piece to show you inside the pie, but it really needs to stand overnight before I do that, and I am thinking I will bring it to my sister's tomorrow if I get invited for supper.
Do believe me however when I tell you that this is a DELICIOUS pie! (Sorry for shouting but I can't help myself when it comes to this pie.)
Crisp buttery crust, sweet, rich apple filling with a creamy sweet brown sugar custard and cinnamon brown sugar streusel on top. Now if that doesn't get your taste buds to tingling, I don't know what will.
I am only sorry it took me so long to share this with you! Now get off here and go and bake one for your family. This pie is guaranteed to make you one of their most favorite people ever!
Cream & Crumb Schnitz Pie
Yield: Makes one 9-inch pie
Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 50 MinTotal time: 1 H & 4 M
This is quite simply my favorite apple pie. I have been baking and eating it for many years. The original recipe comes from a book entitles Food That Really Schmecks by Edna Staebler, published in 1968.
Ingredients
- Pastry for one 9-inch single crust pie
- enough apples to fill the pie shell (I used 1 1/2 large gravenstein apples)
- 1 cup (200g) soft light brown sugar, packed
- 3 TBS cold butter
- 1/3 cup (47g) all purpose plain flour
- 2/3 cup (160ml) cream (sweet, sour or turning)
- 3/4 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425*F/220*C/ gas mark 7. Have your unbaked pie crust ready.
- Measure the flour, sugar and butter into a bowl and rub into crumbs. Sprinkle half of them into the bottom of the pie crust.
- Peel, core and slice your apple into slices (schnitz). Place them in the pie crust on top of the crumbs.
- Divide the remaining crumbs in two. Mix the cream into one portion and mix the cinnamon into the other portion.
- Spoon the cream portion over top of the apples to cover them completely. Sprinkle the cinnamon crumbs over top of all evenly.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350*F/180*C/gas mark 4. Bake for an additional 35 to 40 minutes. The crust will be golden brown, the apples tender and the cream set and golden brown as well.
- Let cool to at least lukewarm before cutting into wedges to serve.
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