Split Chicken Breast and What I Love About Them

Split chicken breast (skin on) are one of my favorite things. You can do so many things with them and they go on sale for 98 cents a lb all the time. I stock up on them whenever they go on sale. Since I am on a very tight budget, I started using them as much as I can for all kinds of meals. In the past I would buy boneless skinless breasts most but they are more expensive even on sale. I still do buy boneless if I am making something that I cannot replace with bone in breast.

The first thing I do when I get home is get them out of the original pkg and individually wrap each one in saran wrap, and put them into a ziploc bag. I always buy a huge thing of cheap quality wrap cause you don't really need it to cling. It's just to keep the chicken from sticking. I do this for a couple of reasons. The first is they won't stick together if they are wraped individually so I can take just one out if I wanted to. Second, it doesn't take as long to defrost as a block of 4 breasts frozen together. I also hate micro defrosting cause I think it makes the meat tough. This does take a few extra minutes to prep and all but it's so worth it in the end.

So everyone seems to love my plain roasted chicken. They seem to wonder what I do to it. LOL Honestly it's not much at all. It's really easy and so damn good. I bake/roast it. I 'll tell you how in a min. You don't even have to thaw the breasts but you can if you want. I make a lot at once. The dinner for that night may be roasted chicken so some of it goes to that. The rest I let cool and then I pull it off the bone. You can even put it in the fridge in a ziploc over night and pull it off the bone the next day. A lot of times I do this on a weekend or slow day. Then I prep some meals with the pulled chicken to be eaten or frozen. Here's a list meals I use it for.

Chicken salad: chop up the chicken and use that

Salad: chop it up and throw it in there

BBQ: this is our fave. I pull it off the bone, chop it or pull it apart. Put it in a baking dish. Smother it with our favorite bbq sauce (sweetbaby ray's sweet and spicy or the chipolte one) add a little water, cover with foil and bake at 350 or go lower, 300, 250 if you have the time. uncover it after a while. The chicken is already cooked so you are really just getting the chicken to soak up the sauce and get tender.

You can also prep the chicken in dish, smother with sauce and freeze to be baked another time!!

You can do the above with any sauce you want, terryaki, jerk, honey mustard...really anything.

You can serve it with sides or make a sandwhich. You could toss it in a salad or whatever, the possibilities are really endless with this technique.

So, here is how I roast it. Frozen or thawed, put chicken breast in baking dish

The last time I roasted chicken these are the spices I used cause it's what I had and ones we like.

I don't really ever do it the same. There are 3 spices that are musts in my book. Thise 3 are

Montreal steak seasoning

Montreal chicken

meat tenderizer (just a little cause it's salty but it will keep your chicken moist and tender.

I don't use salt or pepper as thses seasonings already have them in them

So I put them in the baking dish, I spray them with pam and I sprinkle on the seasonings. I go pretty heavy cause even if we are just eating roasted chicken, we don't eat the skin.

I pop it in the oven at 350 and cook it to my desired temp...I go with 200 cause it's the way I like it and I am weird about meats, especially chicken. I have to make sure it's cooked. Mine stays tender even at that temp but the temp is really up to you.