Meaty Monday: Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze

I have eaten too much this weekend. BBQ food, desserts, and some grazing, since its just been too hot to eat. Monday, for me, is the day I have to rein it all in, but by the time I get home, starvation is nearly setting in and I need to have something in the works that will be good and satisfying. Without turning dinner into an eating free-for-all. By tossing some chicken parts into this Asian-flavored brine before you head off to work, you can have a good chicken dinner on the table in well less than an hour. Your ace in the hole is a Chinese 5-spice powder. It packs a flavor punch with just about no work on your part. You can even make the brine before you've had your morning coffee. It's that simple. The light honey glaze amps up the flavor, but isn't thick or gloppy.  It'll be delicious, nutritious, and  your tastebuds will think you're blowing your diet. But you haven't. Yet. As long as you can skip dessert... Oh, and as per usual, these leftovers are divine!

Note: I highly recommend bone-in, skin on chicken parts for this dish, and then just removing the skin before glazing the chicken at the end. Keeping the skin on while baking will help keep the meat moist and juicy. If you can afford the extra calories, then just leave the skin in place; it add a lot of flavor to the finished dish. Also, if the only chicken breasts you can find with the skin and bone, are large, just cut them in half, straight across the middle with a poultry shears, a sturdy chef's knife or kitchen scissors.

 Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze,
but the half lime went in my tea...oops!

Five Spice Brined Chicken with Honey Lime Soy Glaze
4 servings

For the brine:
8 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs or small chicken breasts
5 cups water
4 Tablespoons Morton's Kosher Salt
2 Tablespoons Chinese Five Spice Powder
2 Tablespoons sugar

For the glaze:
1/3 cup mild honey
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
juice of 1/2 small lime
4 Tablespoons gluten free Tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon powdered ginger

Garnish:
The other half of the lime in small wedges

1. Place the chicken in a large zip top bag. Mix the brine ingredients, stirring until the salt is dissolved, and then pour it over the chicken in the bag. Place the bag in a dish in case it leaks, and then into the fridge for 8 to 12 hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Remove the chicken from the brine and place, skin side up in a shallow metal roasting pan, and bake about 40 to 45 minutes until the temperature of the thigh meat is 160ºF. Mix the glaze ingredients and set aside.

3. Remove the pan from the oven, turn each chicken piece bottom up, and brush with about half of the glaze. Turn the oven to broil and broil the chicken for a minute or two until the glaze begins to bubble. Carefully turn the chicken, and remove the skin if you wish, or leave in place and then brush with the remaining glaze. Broil until browned and bubbly, about 2-3 minutes longer.  Serve garnished with Lime if desired.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Friday: The Coffee Sweetener Dilemma

What the heck can I stir into my coffee in the morning that won't rot my teeth, raise my blood sugar, make me fat, or give me some dread disease somewhere down the road? And doesn't taste weird?

This is probably over-thinking this, but I think I am a sugar addict. My husband says I'm crazy, but I find when I eat a sugar-sweetened dessert, or a piece of candy, I have to have MORE. I can never seem to stop at one serving. Always two and sometimes three. Which is why I try to avoid sugar as much as I can, without turning into a food hermit. According to what I've read from Gary Taubes, I'm probably right about the addictiveness.

I'm guessing I'm not alone, in wanting a little something to sweeten my day, considering how many sugar substitutes I can buy in a single supermarket on a single shopping trip. Aside from plain old cane sugar, there is a plethora of natural and artificial sugar substitutes and the sheer number boggles the mind. Back when I was an online member of Weight Watchers, and frequenting their community boards, there would be outright battles over what to use in place of the demon sugar. No one ever won.

Problem is, I still like my coffee sweetened, or some sort of a decent-tasting  dessert. I've got an arsenal of various sugar substitutes from the generally considered fake artificial, like the saccharine in the pink packets, the aspartame in the blue ones, and the sucralose in the yellow ones. Those are shoved way back in a corner.

Then there are the "alternative" sugars like the sugar alcohols erythritol, xylitol, and the polydextrose (yep, have them, too) and finally the herbal extract, stevia. I'm not even going to discuss the "natural" sugars like raw cane, turbinado, coconut, honey, molasses, and date. Which I also have some of each. What you see here is just from ONE partial sweetener shelf in my pantry. Oy. 

All are good, none are perfect for everything. Sigh.

My current leanings are to evict the artificial ones from their space, and stick to the more naturally occurring products. The problem is, no single sweetener is good for all purposes. I think stevia is revolting in coffee, but fine in smoothies and baking. Xylitol is good for baking and frostings, but can give a digestive upset in quantity. Erythritol is ok in coffee, doesn't give digestive problems, but can be grainy and has a cooling effect in some dishes. No one-size-fits-all here, no matter how much I wish it.

Maybe I'll just start drinking my coffee black.