Quick N Easy Marmalade Chicken

Many of us are still recovering from the cooking marathon that usually accompanies a holiday. Passover has come and gone and is remembered with fondness and joy but hey, some of us just wanna throw something easy together. This is the dish. Now I admit, I made my own marmalade from the Chush Chash tree (bitter orange) that my friend Miriam has in her backyard and was so gracious as to give me a bunch. Now it came out tasting amazing (with a strong undernote of bitter that DH was wild about) but truthfully the marmalade didn’t set up 100 %, it was jiggly but not as firm as it should’ve been, probably cuz I made this on Friday and was in a hurry. So I didn’t send any back to Miriam, mea culpa, do you still love me? Anyway, I decided to use it as a sauce for chicken instead of as a spread on toast. Clearly, you can save yourselves the hassle of making the marmalade and simply buying a nice jar instead. But you can do your own marmalade if you wish.

So you scrub them up and slice not too thin.

Measure the cut up fruit (better by weight but you get the idea).

Really you should weigh it but you can cheat and approximate. To this (not packed down) 4 cups of sliced bitter oranges, add 3 cups of sugar. Cook with the sugar and 5-6 cups of water on high about 10 minutes, reduce and cook an additional 30-40 minutes or till the fruit is very soft and it starts to jell and thicken. Now I won’t lie, I didn’t wanna jar it and boil it in a bath, too lazy. So I used it for the chicken and saved it for a week and made another batch of chicken with it and allll gone. It was awesome. But as I said, you can just use bought marmalade.

And all ya do is mix it with caramelized onions. Now this is important, no cheating and using lightly sauteed onions. It ain’t the same and will just not taste as finger lickin’ good. So go that extra mile. Caramelized Onions in a Slow Cooker or Basic Sauteed Onions, A Kitchen Staple and just make sure to sautee them till nice medium brown.

Now take 8 thighs and drumsticks of chicken and clean ’em up.

Mush the marmalade and onion up together and shmear all over the chicken.

Once chicken is properly coated with the mixture, preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C. Let chix sit in mixture till oven comes to temp about 15-20 minutes. Place in oven and roast 1 1/2 hours or till juices run clear and chicken is lovely and browned. The scent is insane. Serve with plenty of rice, challah or mashed potatoes to get all those glorious drippings.

Quick N Easy Marmalade Chicken

2 large onions, peeled and chopped
2-3 tablespoons oil
8 thighs and drumsticks of chicken, cleaned
1 jar orange marmalade (or if you are brave and bold, make your own)

Directions:

Place the oil in a pot and saute the onions till a nice medium brown, this requires some patience but is worth it for the depth of flavor. Remove from heat and let cool. Take a baking pan large enough to hold the chicken, (not a baking sheet, you need higher sides to contain the liquids). Take the whole jar of marmalade and the onions and mush together right on the chicken and shmear over all. Let chicken sit while you bring the oven up to temp of 350 F or 180 C. Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours or till juices run clear (not pink) and chicken is lovely and browned.