Italian Roast Chicken – Deli flavors in a flash! Roast chicken is on the menu for dinner tonight and I’ll prepare a few meals for Mom including a quick and easy Potato and Leek Soup.
It’s a “no particular recipe in mind” kind of day but I’ve been on a guilt trip all week thanks to a bundle of fresh parsley from which only a few snippets were taken – when fresh.
Today feels like one of those days when you just want to cook. Well, at least I do. All day.
It’s Easy To Dry Fresh Herbs
Since I bought the fresh parsley, the bulk of it has been sitting in a colander on the kitchen counter. Needless to say, leaving fresh herbs out on the counter is not something I do often.
I did it once, deliberately and with success, with a pack of fresh bay leaves.
As I watched the parsley dry, I wondered what would happen if I allowed other fresh herbs (I use quite a bit of fresh rosemary, thyme and sage) to air dry. Without the use of a dehydrator. The parsley became the test subject.
- Would herbs lose all their flavor?
- Would I be able to get them dry enough to store in zip lock bags?
- What would the shelf life be?
- Would they retain the same flavor as when they were fresh?
Parsley & Garlic Marinade
Then it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks!
I would brine the chicken in a pungent parsley based marinade while I prepared the other dishes.
The parsley air dried to perfection and smells just as good as fresh.
I grabbed the bunch carefully between both hands and applied just a little bit of pressure. The parsley crumbled into flakes.
It was easy to crumble the larger flakes into smaller pieces before adding the rest of the brine ingredients.
Pictured above are the results of the “experiment”.
To a well used “vintage” mixing bowl (used by my mother in law to prepare chicken salads for her Farmer’s Market table) I added the following ingredients.
[tasty-recipe id=”10179″]
Chicken in Garlic and Parsley Marinade
Weber All Natural Roast Chicken Seasonings
End result? The parsley did not burn. The skin was crispy and the meat remained juicy!