Easy Cilantro Lime Chicken Recipe from The Mediterranean Dish

By far, one of my most popular recipes is cilantro lime chicken. We give the chicken a quick spice rub and then we cook it in my awesome garlic lime sauce. And word to the wise, you're gonna wanna make every use of that sauce. Hi everyone, Suzy here from themediterraneandish.com, your number one resource for Mediterranean cooking. Let's cook some chicken today. I've got some chicken thighs. And the first thing we're gonna do is put together an amazing spice rub for my chicken. So you need yourself a small bowl like this. I'm gonna start with some seasoned salt, garlic powder, and a little black pepper, a little sweet Spanish paprika. Oh yes, so much flavor right here. And then just a pinch of nutmeg. We're gonna give this all a mix. Now this will bake in the oven in a lime garlic cilantro sauce. It is amazing. But first we're gonna hit it up with this spice mixture. So I believe the secret to well-seasoned chicken is to make sure that you get it underneath the skins because oftentimes we take the skin off. Don't be afraid to kinda pull the skin up a little bit. By the way, I did go ahead and trim any excess fat. Sometimes you get fat kind of wrapping around your chicken. So just take your knife to it. Make sure you have that taken care of. So flip them over and use the remaining seasoning to get underneath. Work it into the chicken. My game plan here, you guys, is first of all, I'm going to brown the chicken on all sides. Because the chicken is gonna cook in a lot of broth and a saucy situation, I like to get the skin browned before it goes in the oven. I'm using a cast iron skillet. So this all will go in one pan and we'll stick it in the oven and dinner will be ready. So let's get to it. Medium, medium high-ish heat because we wanna get some browning on that skin. And then we have a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. We're gonna heat up the oil until shimmering but not smoking. And then we're gonna hit it up with the chicken. My oil is starting to shimmer nicely. I'm going to just carefully add my chicken skin side down first. And my goal is to deeply brown the chicken on both sides. So I'm gonna start here and I'm gonna turn them over. You're looking for really good contact with your pan right here. So I've got all my chicken, each touching the surface of the hot pan. And this is so important to getting that good browning on the skin. All right, let's see. Oh yeah, that's looking good. Flip it over. Couple minutes because we wanna get some browning on both sides. Turn the heat down and remove the chicken for a minute to make room for your sauce. Make sure you lower your heat because you're about to add some liquid. We're gonna go in with one cup of wine. We're gonna deglaze our pan, get all these bits off. Raise the heat a little bit and let this cook down just a tad before adding the rest of the liquid. I am using one to two cups of chicken broth. I like mine a little more saucy so I'm probably more in the one and a half cup range. You want less sauce, use less broth. No big deal. Bring this party to a bubble again and then we're gonna add our lime juice. Two limes, juice up. Don't, yeah, you should not do this if you have a cut on your finger because it will burn. Actually, you know the funny thing is about limes? They're seedless. That's the, that's the. I'm just doing this out of habit to catch the seeds. But hey, there are no seeds in there. That's the bright side. On the bright side, I caught not one seed. Okay, fresh garlic minced. I'm using about six to seven garlic cloves right here. We're gonna snuggle the chicken back in here. My oven is on 375 degrees. It is ready for these chickens. Finale, fresh cilantro. This is one big bunch that I chopped up ahead of time. We're gonna let this party boil for a few minutes here. Let the juices work and then we're gonna cover it, put it in the oven until the chicken is done. I think it might take anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes, depending on your oven. All right, you guys, this cilantro lime chicken is going down with my Lebanese rice for dinner today. Definitely check out the Lebanese rice video. The sauce over the rice is absolutely amazing. Don't forget to subscribe and follow this channel for more delicious recipes. For the cilantro lime chicken recipe, head over to TheMediterraneanDish.com. I will see you later, ciao.