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Yogurt Marinated Chicken


It turns out that one of the best ways to prepare chicken is also completely carnivore. Welcome to yogurt marinated chicken!


Most yogurt based chicken marinade recipes include other ingredients like lemon, spices, and garlic. Creating this recipe I experimented with some of these variations, but found that additional ingredients made little difference. However, comparing my yogurt-chicken to some un-marinated chicken cooked the same way proved that the yogurt made a significant difference in taste and texture! So, here is your minimalistic, no-frills, completely carnivore instruction for preparing yogurt marinated chicken.

 

Ingredients

- Chicken pieces (I used drumsticks)

- 2 tablespoons of unsweetened, high-fat yogurt per piece of chicken

- 1/4 teaspoon of salt per piece of chicken


Instructions

- For each piece of chicken you wish you marinate, mix together the yogurt and salt in a ziplock bag, add the chicken, and work the yogurt around the chicken to make sure it's thoroughly covered.

- Let the chicken sit for several hours up to a day.

- Remove the chicken and cook as normal. You don't need to get the yogurt out of the bag to cook it or wipe the yogurt off the chicken, just remove it as it is.

- For drumsticks and other pieces of chicken with skin on them, a good way to cook is to pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. While you wait, brown pieces on each side for 4-5 minutes on a skillet over high heat, then transfer to the oven for about 40-50 minutes until the internal temperature reads 165 degrees.

 

This is a classic method for marinating chicken. The salt and the mild acidity of the yogurt tenderize the chicken and when cooked, caramelize nicely around the chicken.


To test the marinade, I cooked some drumsticks with it and some without it. Along with a more tender consistency and better taste, this experiment revealed another fantastic benefit of this marinade- it can get rid of the off taste of old chicken! Even though I prepared my chicken only the day after I bought it, I realized it was old when I tried some of the un-marinated chicken. This taste doesn't mean chicken is unsafe to eat, but I know from experience that it is very hard to ignore or get rid of. Before going carnivore, I've tried to drown this taste out with barbecue sauce and other things, but it's never completely worked. However, my yogurt marinated drumsticks tasted fresh while the non-marinated ones had a noticeable off flavor.


Yogurt marinating works best with higher fat yogurt- which of course is great news for ketognic diets!


Like all dairy products, yogurt is something I try not to eat all the time and I don't make a whole meal out of it. All yogurt will still have some carbohydrates, but certain kinds can be pretty low-carb and high-fat. Yogurts made from cream are fairly common in Europe but are hard to find the US, unfortunately. Peak Triple Cream yogurt is a great brand made especially with a ketogenic diet in mind, but it is only sold at a few stores on the West Coast as of right now. You may be able to find other brands of cream yogurt at very specialized health food stores or co-ops, but a good bet that is available at most stores if Fage Total 5%, which is made with a combination of whole milk and cream. Where I live in Flagstaff, AZ, this is the highest-fat, lowest-carb yogurt I can find.


Along with experimenting between yogurt and non-yogurt drumsticks, I tried one recipe with lemon juice and one recipe with lemon juice and curry spice, to see how big of a difference these more complicated, mainstream recipes made. Lemon juice is often added to make the marinade more acidic. If you allow some spices and additives, these are fine to add to your marinade, but I didn't notice that they made much difference.


Fun fact: Part of my research for this post was figuring out the difference between the words "marinade" and "marinate". It turns out "marinade" is the noun while "marinate" is the verb. Although spellcheck won't correct it, this means "marinaded" is not actually a real word. Now you know more than spellcheck and have seen a nuance of the English language that you probably haven't before.

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