Are you hungry yet?

We tend to eat a lot of chicken and fish when we eat meat; beef used to break things up occasionally but now that we're "cow-free" beef is OUT.  Trust me you start to run out of variety after a while especially when it comes to chicken.  One of the things I like to do on the weekends is roast a whole chicken that I can cut up and use for other meals or send with my husband for lunch.  The typical Italian way to make it is with Italian seasonings (ie: parsley, oregano, basil, etc), garlic, onions and olive oil inside and poked into the meat itself.

Then we went to Bonefish Grill (a great GF option!) and had their chimicurri sauce.  I fell in love and decided to look up a recipe.  Well, like always I decided to make my own version :)  SO I'm sharing my version with you...of course I never measure anything, it's all to taste but I did the best I could to write it down.  My suggestion, dip your finger in a sample once it's all assembled BEFORE you put this on the chicken and defile it with raw chicken bacteria!  I don't want anyone going to the hospital! 

Normally chimicurri is known for parsley and olive oil as the base, but when I made it I only had a little parsley and not the 1 cup of parsley they asked for leaving me to get creative.  What I did have was cilantro!  Below is what I came up with:

1 cup parsley -> substitute 1 cup cilantro and add in a few shakes of the dried parsley
3/4 extra virgin olive oil
3 tbs. red wine (or red wine vinegar, I use a combo of 6 tbs. red wine and marsala wine)
2 tbs. oregano (fresh is always better but I used dry this time)
2 tsp. Goya Adobo (I added more to taste after everything was mixed)
3 cloves chopped garlic (I added way more than this actually!)
1 small onion chopped
1/2 tbs. GF hot sauce

Here's the original recipe that I "doctored.  I chopped the "solids" in a food processor before blending the liquids and solids all together in a bowl.

Once everything is together and stirred well, I take a taste and adjust the seasonings as needed.  As I said before, I start out with measurements and quickly walk off the paper with additions lol!  Now here's the really important part: I used a 5 pound chicken, if you are using a bigger chicken you will probably need more ingredients so you have enough of the sauce to use as "gravy" or for other recipes later on in the week.  Now that everything's together poke a bunch of holes in the chicken and make sure the inside is empty of the guts.  Then take the chimicurri sauce and spread with your hands over the chicken, making sure you poke garlic and onions into the holes you made along with the sauce.  Add some sauce inside the chicken as well.  The secret to a juicy chicken is to bake it for the first 15-20 mins on 450 degrees and then lower to 325 degrees for the rest of the time it need to bake.  This "shocks" the outside locking in the flavor!  Mine took about 2 hours to cook, but it really depends on your oven!

In the pan with the chicken I roasted carrots, they tasted great but you don't have to cook anything with it (made it a little difficult to scoop out just the sauce to put over stuff).  I also made mashed potatoes to go along with this, the chimicurri sauce is AMAZING over the mashed potatoes!  You can make whatever veggie you want.  Chicken goes with anything.  Do yourself a favor and cut up the chicken for leftovers when it's still warm not cold from the refrigerator. (I've done both and learned the hard way!)  It's a lot easier, plus you can separate different portion sizes for the rest of the week.

There's another chicken sitting in my refrigerator waiting to be turned into yummy goodness, alas a birthday party calls me away from the kitchen!  It will have it's day though :)  Enjoy everyone, let me know what you think!