Garlic Chicken

In the past week, I’ve received emails from at least a DOZEN random people telling me they made Mom’s Garlic Chicken recipe and it was delicious.  This feedback warmed my heart as Garlic Chicken was also my all-time favorite dish for dinner as a child and still today as an adult.

I decided to repost the recipe and abbreviated story again, 1 1/2 years later, with the hopes that even more people will benefit from this tasty dinner dish— it’s seriously that good.  The juicy plumpness of the chicken breasts coupled with the sweet, buttery and crunchy marinade is beyond satisfying.

Whenever I was about to go on break from college Mom would call me the night before my arrival and ask the perfunctory question, “what do you want for dinner when you get home?” She’d always chuckle because she really knew the answer.  I guess it was our little game. When I’d arrive, usually weary from the flight and the seemingly endless car ride from the airport, the house would be wafting with the sweetest garlicky aroma.  And, somehow, Mom always timed the confluence of my arrival with the start of dinner perfectly.

There, in the center of our very average-sized dinner table, lay the largest Pyrex dish ever seen (to me at least).  It would be overflowing with at least 10 plump, moist, boned chicken breasts basting in a bubbly brown garlic marinade, coated with the crispiest breadcrumbs.  I still chuckle at the memory of getting my hands slapped once or twice for trying to sneak eat a piece before the meal.  To foil me, Mom would have the chicken arranged in perfect rows in the dish so she could see if any piece was manipulated.   I alone could eat at least two full breasts at any sitting and, there were rarely any leftovers.

I knew I had to recreate this dish for my own kids.  It would feel sac-religious not to.

After scanning the recipe for the first time ever, I smiled and had a major “aha” moment–of course the dish tastes great — it calls for a stick and a half of butter!  While I do consider myself to be health conscious, I pledged allegiance to myself and to my mom that I would try to stay authentic to all the ingredients in her recipes. 

Within minutes, that stick and a half of butter, the Worcestershire sauce, and the garlic were boiling together over top the plump chicken breasts in the oven.

Simultaneously, those sweet familiar aromas transported me back to my childhood house,  over 25 ago.  And, by rare coincidence, my kids just happened to rush in from school right when I was taking the finished masterpiece out from the oven.

“YUM, it smells good in here,” my son sang out as he dropped his backpack and coat in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“Is this meal going to be as tasty as the flank steak?” he asked, unabashed.

I smiled at my devoted 7-year old food critique and said with complete confidence, “OF COURSE!”

That night at diner, I felt like there were three kids eating happily around our little kitchen table; I was the third!

Enjoy.

Note: this meal keeps fresh 2-3 days in the refrigerator.