Recipe: Cherry Chicken

I’ve been having so much fun cooking again. Dave has been doing almost all of the cooking after we got married in 2007. At the end of last year we decided to share the cooking by alternating every two weeks.

At the end of my two weeks I made this new dish. Our friends Barbara and Bob had served this to us several weeks ago. Bob cooked this and served it with brown rice and a couple veggies. We liked it so well, that I wanted to make it for us. I’ve made a couple changes to his recipe and served it with whole wheat couscous.

I love cherries and to pair them with chicken – Yum!

Cherry Chicken [print_link]

4 boneless chicken breasts
olive oil
flour
1 can of sweet cherries
1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 – 12 oz bottle of chili sauce
1/4 cup of brown sugar or less to taste
1 teaspoon lite soy sauce

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Coat the chicken with the flour. Add some olive oil to the baking dish and coat both sides of the chicken.
Bake for 10 minutes. Turn chicken over and bake an additional 10 minutes.
While the chicken is in the oven, add the juice from the cherries, the onion, garlic, chili sauce, brown sugar, and soy sauce to a small sauce pan and simmer.
Now reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Pour sauce over the browned chicken and bake 30 or so minutes. Once the chicken’s internal temperature is 160 degrees turn off the oven.
Spoon cherries over the chicken dish and leave in warm oven for 10- 15 minutes, just enough time to warm up the cherries.
Take out of the oven and serve.

I served it with the whole wheat couscous and some of our green beans from last year’s harvest.

This tends to be a sweet dish, so if you want to make it less sweet leave out the brown sugar or use less. This was a great dish – one I’ll keep in my recipe folder for the future.