Peach Chicken

Ok, so I finally had a reason to make my peach chicken again which of course gives me a reason to blog about it! My wife was off to a jewelry party and then a girls afternoon so I was tasked with making dinner. We have chicken, we have peaches...duh-duhda! I made this once before in such dire circumstances but it didn't turn out quite as good. I have learned from my mistakes and now I share it with you in all it's modified glory! For the original recipe click Here.

First off you need a lightly greased 9x13 pan. Second, they recommend 8 chicken breasts but I'd go with around 6, cut in half and/or filleted in that the thinner they are, the better. This recipe is also nice and simple.

Ingredients
8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 cup brown sugar
4 fresh peaches - peeled, pitted and sliced
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Now, I have yet to make this with the lemon juice and it turned out just great last time so I'm not sure what that does. But it does call for it so it's up to you. Also, if you don't have fresh peaches, you can substitute canned peaches but I suggest you go to the original recipe and read the reviews to find out what people did to adjust for the sugary aspect of canned vs. fresh peaches. Ours were frozen fresh and defrosted.

I sprinkle roughly two tablespoons or so of brown sugar in the bottom of the pan before putting in the chicken breasts. I'm all about uniform flavor. Put in the chicken and hopefully it fills most of the bottom of the pan. If you do lemon juice, this is probably where I'd do it. Take 1/2 cup of the brown sugar and sprinkle it over the chicken breasts. Then put on the peach slices.

Add the other spices to the remaining 1/2 cup of brown sugar and mix together with a fork. This allows for that nice uniform flavoring. Sprinkle the brown sugar/spice mixture over everything.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. They recommend basting occassionally with the juices. I don't usually pay enough attention to an oven-baked item to do that.

Whilst that was baking I prepped for rice and decided to make some of my garlic potatoes. This time however, I left some of the skin on the red potatoes because I can and it makes peeling them go faster. Then I sliced and started cooking them with 1/4 of a cup of butter. I put in two cloves of garlic soon after. I added 1/2 a white onion as well this time and it cooked up pretty good. However, for the amount of time you have to cook the potatoes in a frying pan, I might suggest prepping the potatoes before putting the chicken in the oven. Stir them often to evenly distribute the butter and flavor. I also added some taragon near the end for color.

And that's what was for dinner!