BB: Indonesian Ginger Chicken Recipe

This month's recipe for the Barefoot Bloggers was Indonesian Ginger Chicken  picked by Todd of A Cooking Dad.

Now I was pretty happy with the recipe from the get go as I have got to love one of Ina's recipes that only has 5 ingredients and that's including the chicken. Honey, soy sauce, grated ginger, garlic and chicken. Sounds simple. And for the most part it was except for the part of peeling and grating the fresh ginger which smelled wonderful but was annoying to peel for me. But then again, I didn't have a peeler and was therefore peeling with one of my graters which contributed to the whole mess. By the end of trying to grate half a cup of ginger (if there's another time with this recipe, I'm picking up ginger chunks at Penzys) I had given up on grating the ginger and finished it off by dicing it into pieces and throwing it into the pot.

I also went with boneless chicken breasts as I already had that in the freezer so assembly was fairly easy.However, I had to guess a bit at cooking times as the recipe called for quartered boned chicken. So I went with 50 minutes which was just a few minutes too much for the chicken...it was still moist but not as juicy as if I had shaved probably 5 minutes off the total.

Some of the other BB Bloggers had reported that they found the recipe too sweet. I did not see it that way, but then I took some liberties with measuring. I didn't have garlic cloves so I went with some minced garlic and tossed in what I thought was right. So between the grated ginger/ginger chunks and garlic, I found this to be just right for me with a little hint of ginger and saltiness from the soy sauce.

Considering how nice it turned out visually, I think I would make this for dinner again with guests and leave it pretty much as is..or as it turned out with my generous measuring estimates.

Ingredients

nocoupons

• 1 cup honey
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup minced garlic (8 to 12 cloves)
• 1/2 cup peeled and grated fresh ginger root
• 2 (3 1/2 pound) chickens, quartered, with backs removed

Directions

Cook the honey, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger root in a small saucepan over low heat until the honey is melted. Arrange the chicken in 1 layer in a shallow baking pan, skin side down, and pour on the sauce. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the baking pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover the pan, turn the chicken skin side up, and raise the temperature to 375 degrees F. Continue baking for 30 minutes or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh and the sauce is a rich, dark brown.