The Orange Strainer: The Twin Dinners

Recipe: Ranch-Style Chicken

Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier

Time: 2.5 hrs total (includes marinating time)

Ease: 2

Taste: 8

Left over Value: 9

Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the strainer!

*For additional information about my rating system go here.

Raise your hand if this has ever been you. You're looking for something to cook for dinner. Of course, it's only an hour before dinnertime because usually you are a great planner, but today you're slacking just a little bit. You find what appears to be the perfect recipe. You go ahead to get started preparing it and realize the meat needs to marinate for a million years before you can cook it.

Ok, so maybe that isn't exactly what I recently faced, but I sure came close.

Monday, my sister-in-law, Kristina, invited me to go out to lunch and since I am constantly looking for any way to get out of eating lunch alone at home I jumped at the suggestion.

Three hours later, we both realized we would eventually have to make dinner for our husbands.

Kristina leafed through The Pioneer Woman's newest cookbook to 'Ranch-Style Chicken', a recipe that had been on my list of "Meals to Make", and we both said, "Yes!".

Then we read the fine print declaring that the chicken needed to marinate for two to four hours and I ran out the door to get home and get started.

Kristina's was done about a half hour before mine, and she instantly texted me pictures of her beautiful dining table:

(I was a little jealous of the corn on the cob).

And a close up of the delicious chicken cooking:

It actually ended up being a pretty simple and tasty meal. The concoction that the chicken marinated in included honey, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, paprika, and red pepper flakes. I was worried the lemon might be over powering (because that's just how lemon is sometimes...) but it wasn't. The flavor was perfect and the little addition of bacon and cheddar cheese was the icing on the....chicken.