The Tylers: Year One and Beyond!: Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

One of the more interesting twists the Universe has seen fit to saddle us with this year is having me learn to cook meals outside of the microwaveable meals realm. See, with Evan always either working, at graduate school, or commuting between the two. And me, being a lowly substitute that generally subs at a school less than four minutes from our house, have to take on the dinner duty a lot of the time.

At first, when I realized that I was going to be in the kitchen a lot more often, and for longer than it takes to get a cookie or a bowl of cereal (both viable meals in my opinion; Evan begs to differ) I actually felt anxious. Cooking, you may (or may not) be surprised to learn, is not my forte. Like, at all. As in, I honestly believe I'd be better at pole vaulting.

But, I had to stand up to the challenge, lest we both starve or end up eating at 8:30 pm every night. I decided to start in the rookie leagues, and scoured Pinterest for any Crock Pot recipe that needed minimal ingredients. I have a ton, and really, my Crock Pot has granted me a precious lift in cooking self-esteem.

So today, I decided to branch out and try out one of the more challenging appliances in my kitchen. Our oven terrifies me. It's a gas oven, so when it's on and you look inside, it quite literally looks like the fires of Hell. Understandably, I try to avoid it, but today I wanted to tackle a recipe that I had made before, and Evan had really liked. The poor man has been fed Crock Pot meals for the last week, and I feel like we needed a break.

If you're even remotely as incompetent in the kitchen as I am, and have somehow stumbled onto this little blog, here's a recipe you may want to try!

So, without further ado, here's my attempt to successfully make Brown Sugar Chicken.

First, you need decent music. I can't cook in total silence, because I feel like I'm being punished. So, my first step in attempting to make anything edible is finding a good playlist to either dance or sing your cooking-related stress out to. My choice today was my Jason Mraz playlist on Pandora.

After you get a good vibe going, you need your ingredients. The reason I love this recipe so much is that there's absolutely minimal effort and maximum flavor. All you need for this is:

Chicken breasts or thighs - about a pound and a half. To be honest, I just put four breasts on a plate and called it good.
A packet of Italian seasoning. I buy these by the handful because you can use them in a ton of recipes and saves you time by not making you take out those ridiculously tiny spice jars, filling even tinier spoons with the spices/getting spices all over your kitchen counter, and making your own seasoning.
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed.

That's it. Really. Oh, and you'll need a shallow baking dish. You can either spray it with non-stick spray, or line it with aluminum foil. The former is a great way to spend the evening scrubbing away all the caramelized brown sugar like a 19th century wash woman. Therefore, I recommend lining it with foil.

My ingredients posing beautifully before being subjected to my culinary skills. Or lack thereof.

My aluminum foil-lining job. Be jealous.

Find a medium-ish (my recipe is really specific, I know) sized bowl, and mix the brown sugar and the seasoning together. Once your chicken is defrosted, pat it dry with a paper towel (and try to not get raw chicken juices all over the counter, as I did) and coat each chicken breast with the mixture.

My mixture and too-small bowl. I ended up just standing the chicken breasts in the bowl and spooning the seasonings on it.

If you have extra seasoning left over, you can just spoon that over the chicken in the dish. That's what I did, and the chicken didn't mind a bit.

The coated result, before going into the oven!

I had preheated my (evil) oven to 350 degrees before opening it and throwing that good ol' baking dish in there. I then crossed my fingers, did a quick "let my chicken be edible" dance to the culinary gods, and set my trusty timer for one hour. I then proceeded to wipe the heck off of my kitchen counters with Clorox wipes because I was sure the chicken juices I had accidentally spilled while patting my chicken down a bit too vigorously had resulted in my very own salmonella colony.

Chicken in the oven, and the time left after my quick chicken dance to the culinary gods

A hypochondriac's best friend.

The final result!

Close-up of the deliciousness. I sliced it because I was positive it couldn't have been this easy, and I was sure it was completely raw on the inside. It wasn't!