PW’s Crispy Yogurt Chicken

I had some chicken in the freezer that needed to get used up. I’m submitting this for Deep Freeze II. It’s a great blogging event that encourages everyone to look into your freezer and make a meal out of what you find. Most of the ingredients for this meal came from my freezer. I keep garlic, chopped basil and chopped cilantro in the freezer. These are all in the form of store-bought ice-cube-like trays that I found at Trader Joes. They’re a life saver in a pinch and taste just like the real thing. The garlic is so much more fragrant than the jarred stuff (Hubby refuses to use the jarred garlic).

When I mixed up the yogurt mixture it smelled so good I wanted to eat a big dollop on a cracker. I bumped up the garlic as usual. The leftover yogurt would have been perfect for dipping our black-bean sweet-potato fritters into. Unfortunatly, I forgot to set some aside before I started dredging the chicken in the yogurt. Grr. I was so mad!

The chicken I had was boneless skinless breasts. So I cut them into cutlet sizes and went from there. These didn’t turn out that crispy (especially compared to what PW got). I guess you need the skin for that? I’ll definitely make these again with some skin-on chicken. Please excuse the quality of the photo. This was a late dinner for us and all the natural light was gone…

Crispy Yogurt Chicken – from the Pioneer Woman
Chicken legs
2 cups Plain, unflavored yogurt
2-3 garlic cloves
parsley – I used cilantro
juice of 1 lemon
salt
butter
~2 cups Panko bread crumbs

(I rewrote the instructions here, see the PW site for original instructions)
Pour 2 cups yogurt into a bowl. Add the minced garlic and parsley. Mix well. Add the lemon juice and mix to combine.

Rinse and pat the chicken dry. Sprinkle with kosher salt.

In another bowl, place the bread crumbs. Stir in some salt.

Butter a baking dish. With a pair of tongs place the chicken into the yogurt one piece at a time. Turn over to coat thoroughly. Then roll the chicken in the bread crumbs. Cover with crumbs and place in baking dish.

Finally, place a slice of butter over the large part of each chicken piece. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for ~1 hour. Take the foil off for the last 15 minutes. When chicken is golden, remove and enjoy.