Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken

This week I’m sharing this delicious Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken recipe. It’s uncomplicated, flavorful, and a healthier way to cook chicken.  Seriously, you simply chop up fresh herbs and garlic, toss them around with chicken, lemon juice, and a splash of oil and you have an amazing dinner on your hands.  Lickety-split, this meal’s the shit!

Kieran and I eat skinless chicken breasts every week.  Although chicken breasts may be healthy, we both get bored and crave an alternative like chicken drumsticks.  I recently started buying drumsticks on a regular basis, and I’m glad I did because those tasty little bastards are delicious!  Most occasions we prepare the Juicy Broiled Buffalo Drumsticks but this Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken is our new go-to.  This recipe SCREAMS summertime since you’re using zesty ingredients like lemon, and fun bright flavors found in the 5 fresh herbs.  For those of you lucky enough to have a home garden, you probably have the majority of the herbs growing in your backyard!

Speaking of home gardens, it’s time for a Special Kieran and Christina News Flash…

WE JUST OFFICIALLY CLOSED ON OUR FIRST HOME!!!

Holy crap readers, I feel like I just gave birth.  Kieran and I put 12 offers on homes we liked in Portland.  12.  The Portland housing market is a shit show with barely any inventory and hundreds of buyers.  One house we bid on had 19 other offers on it!  The people who outbid us either waived inspections, waived appraisals, put down large deposits, or paid in cash.  Shit, in some cases they did all four!  Talk about a stressful, whirlwind experience.  I’m happy it’s over and we finally have a house to call our own.

Want to hear something interesting?  Kieran and I put 12 offers on homes and we were married on October 12th.  Coincidence?  Yes 😀

I’m most excited about being at the helm making design decisions for the house.  Kieran’s and my style looks like we just graduated college, we own a mishmash of hand-me-down wooden furniture that’s been given to us over the years, and a few new pieces of furniture we’ve purchased from Ikea.  Nothing goes together or matches any color scheme.  I’m excited to repaint, repurpose, and breathe new life into our possessions and develop my own style.

The house we purchased is a 1938 Tudor style home.  Tudor homes have a medieval flavor featuring heavy chimneys and steeply pitched roofs.  Straight up, the outside of our new home looks like a fairy’s cottage or mini castle, I’m smitten.  My desire is to remodel sections of the house that haven’t aged well, but preserve as much history as I can.   I’m currently gravitating towards a style that has a juxtaposition between stone and exposed wood with industrial metal accents.  If you follow me on Pinterest you’ve probably noticed I’ve been pinning a fuck ton of design pics for inspiration.

Kieran and I took some boxes to the house last night then drank wine and ran around the property, giggling like little school girls.  We went room and room and compiled a list of updates we want to accomplish.  We’ll focus on the cheapest remodels which lend the biggest impact, like painting.  Another fun and a relatively cheap project I’m looking forward to are breathing new life into the living room fireplace.  Currently, the fireplace is painted pale green, Kieran and I wish to install a new stone facade around it for a dramatic and old-timey look.  I mean shit, if you’re going to buy a house that looks like a castle on the outside, you might as well make the inside look castle-y too!

Another area of the house that’s in need of repair is the kitchen.  The kitchen hasn’t been touched since the first owner bought it and it shows.  I WISH I could salvage aspects of the kitchen, to persevere some history, but it’s a total wash.   The cabinets are decrepit and the tile looks aged and dirty.  And not the kind of dirty you can clean off, the dirt looks like it’s become one with the tile, it’s gross.  Although I’m eager to demo the kitchen, I’m intimidated because I know nothing (like Jon Snow) about kitchen design.  I do want to take out the wall between the kitchen and dining room to open up the space, but I’m clueless on how to properly space out kitchen appliances and such.  Good thing I’m a researching FREAK so I’ll be relying on the internet and possibly contractors for help.

Another area of the house I’m stoked to redo is the backyard.  The layout of the backyard is perfect, but it needs some loving care.  Kieran and I need to mow the lawn, pull weeds, and revitalize the 7 raised garden beds to their original luster.  Plus, most important of all, we get to buy a grill.  I’ve bitched and moaned about our apartment complex not allowing us to grill on our deck so you can probably guess how delighted I am to finally grill some grub in my own backyard.  Grilling is one of my favorite activities in the world, so if you love to grill too, you’ll love recipes to come.

Speaking of grilling last weekend our friends invited us to a BBQ and we brought our own meats to eats! I mean, we brought along our own chicken drumsticks to grill, which made it possible for me to bring you the Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken recipe this week!  Awesome segue about this recipe, eh?

I asked my friends to walk naturally in the background of my shot. This is what transpired 😀

Good God, Lord, or whatever deity you’re into, this recipe tasted yummy, and it couldn’t be easier to make!  You marinate chicken (you can use breasts, thighs, or drumsticks) with 5 fresh herbs, garlic, lemon juice, a little oil, and some seasonings.  Everything in this recipe can be adapted to your taste preferences!  Dude, I bet marinating the chicken with chopped up jalapeño would be amazeballs.

The only bummer aspect of the Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken recipe is dealing with the fresh thyme.  Dude, I don’t know about you but I’m not a fan of fresh thyme, only because it’s a pain in the ass to pluck the little leaves off the stem.  If you need a bunch of fresh thyme for a recipe, it takes forever!!  I need to watch a tutorial on how to quickly get the tiny leaves off the stem, or just use dried thyme, because right now I feel like using fresh thyme is some painstaking bullshit.

The recipe says to marinate the chicken for 2 hours which I recommend.  You can get away with 1 hour (I’ve tried that) but the chicken is not nearly as flavorful.  Give yourself time and marinate the chicken for the full 2 hours.

I’m a huge fan of how healthy this recipe is.  The idea of flavoring chicken with fresh ingredients like herbs and lemon appeals to me.  I love BBQ chicken but most BBQ sauces have sugar and most store-bought BBQ sauces have unnatural sweeteners.  This Grilled 5 Herb Lemon Chicken recipe packs a mammoth flavor punch with minimal and all natural ingredients.  GAH!  I love it so much.

Summer is coming folks, fire up those grills and give this delightfully fresh tasting recipe a try!

Thanks for stopping by,

Christina

 1/3 cup avocado oil – 636 (note, some of the avocado oil stays in the bowl after marination.  I’m including the entire portion of oil in my calorie count, but it could be lower)
2 garlic cloves – 8
1 teaspoon salt – 0
1/4 teaspoon pepper – 0
Pinch of red pepper flakes – 0
Pinch of turmeric (optional) – 0
Big handful of parsley, roughly 1/2 cup – 11
Big handful of cilantro, roughly 1/2 cup – 2
1 teaspoon fresh thyme – 0
1 teaspoon fresh oregano – o
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary – 0
Lemon zest from 1 lemon – 0
Juice from 1/2 a lemon – 6
6 chicken skinless drumsticks- 432
*I think there may be a calorie or two in the fresh herbs, I’m not counting those, you’ll burn them off just by prepping the recipe!

Total calories if you eat all 6 chicken drumsticks – 1,095
3 drumsticks – 365
1 drumstick – 182.50

*Note, I am not a nutritionist, nor am I pretending to be. I found the calorie counts by reading the nutrition labels on the food I purchased, searching Google, and using my Lose It! app on my phone.using my Lose It! app on my phone.