Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Vegetables

I am trying out some new Weight Watchers Recipes from a great site devoted to just WW.

Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Vegetables

borrowed from Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes

*** 9 WW Point Plus***

• 10 (20 oz) boneless skinless chicken thighs
• bunch asparagus, ends trimmed, cut in half
• 3 red bell peppers
• 1 cup carrots, sliced in half long way
• 2 red onions, chopped in large chunks
• 1 package sliced mushrooms***you know me, I dont do fungus**
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt and pepper
• 3 tbsp fresh rosemary
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed and sliced
• 2 tbsp oregano or thyme
• 4 leaves fresh sage, chopped

Here is the original directions that I altered slightly

Preheat oven to 425°. Wash and dry the chicken well with a paper towel. Combine all the ingredients together and using your hands and arrange in a very large roasting pan. The vegetables should not touch chicken or it will steam. All ingredients should bespread out in a single layer, if necessary use two baking dishes or disposable tins to achieve this. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes.

Here is what I did.

I preheated the oven to 375 degrees. Mostly because I wanted to cook the rice at the same time and so I met in the middle for both temps. Wash and dry the chicken with a paper towel. Put them in a large ziplock bag. Chop the Veggies and put them in the bag as well. In a large bowl, put all the other ingredients and then emulsify them with your hand blender. You dont need to chop anything because the blender does all the work, so just throw it in. Then add it to the bag, close it, and shake to coat. Arrange contents of the bag in 2 large baking dishes preferably disposable ones so you dont have to clean them later on. Arrange everything in a single layer (hence the 2 pans)The veggies shouldnt touch the chicken or they will steam.

Bake for 40-45 minutes.

I made it with........

Baked Brown Rice

1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the above ingredients in a 3-quart baking pan or casserole dish and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for five minutes before removing the aluminum foil and fluffing with a fork.

Variations:
Before baking, slice one small yellow onion into dices or half moons and caramelize and brown in 1 teaspoon of olive oil until golden and soft (about 10 minutes in a nonstick skillet). Stir onion into rice and broth mixture and bake according to recipe.

After removing riced from the oven and letting it sit for five minutes, remove aluminum foil and stir in the zest and juice from 1 lemon, 1/2 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/2 apple, finely diced.

Recipe Source: from My Kitchen Cafe

VERDICT:

Delicious, fast, easy, full of flavor, healthy......so go make it. I really liked my changes because it covered everything so evenly and perfectly. It gave the chicken and veggies amazing dark color and every bite had the great flavors. They veggies were so tasty I could see making just the veggies again. I love the WW recipes that you cant tell are WW and this is a great go to meal to add to your collection. The rice....ah the rice. I needed to not cook it as long because the temp was too high (because of cooking it with the chicken) and I actually burnt it. I never burn anything so I was kind of shocked. So the top was OK but the bottom was crunchy. I also think it was dried out but that was because of the overcooking I am sure. I loved the concept, but I need to work on the timing and the none-burning thing. I also dont think I added enough salt which with brown rice is kind of important because it always need a little flavor. Because it takes over an hour to cook, I dont know how often this will make it into my rotation because it takes for-thought, but if you can do it, its a really great and easy way to make rice....as long as you dont over cook it and burn the bottom.