How To Lighten Up Your Chicken Dinner with Lemon Mushroom Sauce

I roast a chicken pretty frequently. Especially these days, it seems like the best deal as far as chicken goes. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets the other day when I saw how much they were asking for a couple of boneless, skinless breasts. A whole chicken gives me so much versatility.

That doesn’t mean I want to eat it the same way all the time, though. Michael could eat roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy with peas and stuffing 3 times a week, but that’s a little heavy for me to eat so often. So, what’s a girl to do? One easy idea is to cook the whole thing and slice down just the leanest part you want to eat that day. Skip the gravy and mashed potatoes in favor of something lighter like a lemon mushroom sauce.

If you’ve got a chicken in the oven, it’s a no brainer to toss potatoes or another vegetable into the roasting pan during the last half hour of cooking.

I put the raw giblets in the freezer for another time as I didn’t feel like making and eating gravy. Instead, I opted to make a quick and light sauce once it was time to serve dinner. Into the skillet went some olive oil and sliced mushrooms. Cooked on high heat until brown and then added minced garlic and about a minute later some lemon juice. So easy and delicious.

If it’s too hot to turn on the oven, do it in a skillet instead. You can cut up the raw chicken however you like. You can cut it into pieces at the joints or just slice thin pieces that you would like to cook for one meal. Why not? You can cook the remainder later in any number of ways and create a variety of dishes.

Does this sound crazy to you? Why should you do it?

• Roasting a chicken is easy
• Leftovers are fuel for the imagination
• Boiling the carcass yields the best stock

I’m talking about simplifying as much as possible! Cooking without a recipe is liberating.

For another dish based on slicing out the raw breast of a whole chicken and serving with delicious sauce, please read Jump For Joy next.