Iranian Grilled Chicken
 

This is a popular Iranian method of preparing chicken. When I was 10 years old and we lived in Teheran, the aroma of this being grilled openly at 5-6pm on portable grills in front of shops on the main northbound boulevard in Teheran lingers with me to this day. And that was 50+ years ago! Don't remember which smelled better, this chicken or the to-die-for fresh sheet bread being baked at 5pm at all the bakeries on that street. Enough of my nostalgia trip there......this recipe is well worth trying. The flavor is divine. Don't worry if you can't find the sumac, as it's pretty good without it also.

My Dad cooked often when we lived in Iran and for many years after we returned home. Our assigned motor pool driver in Iran, Reza, taught my Dad how to make this wonderful dish. My addition to the recipe is the smoked Spanish paprika. I know for certain that was not in the recipe my Mother wrote down brought back to the States. The original recipe uses a popular Iranian spice, sumac, which can be obtained in better spice stores, ordered on-line from places like Penzey’s Spices…….or you can grow your own like my father did! Sumac is the ground, dried berries/fruit of the sumac bush. It is a slightly acidic, lemony tasting spice that is found in many Iranian, Israeli and other Gulf States dishes. If you can’t get sumac, it can be omitted without great detriment to the final flavor of this dish. This recipe is Atkins Induction friendly and Paleo-Primal acceptable as well. Because it is impossible to calculate the total nutritional info per serving, as that would depend on the specific pieces of chicken eaten, I will just provide the information for each of 10 servings of the marinade (the # of pieces of chicken I get from a chicken, cutting each breast in half) of sauce and you will have to calculate and add in the values for the piece(s) of chicken eaten.

INGREDIENTS:

1 stick unsalted butter or ghee, melted
Juice of 2 lemons
Dash each salt and pepper
½ tsp. sumac
1½ paprika (I use smoked Spanish paprika)
½ tsp. turmeric
1 onion, minced very fine
1 whole chicken, cut into 10 pieces

DIRECTIONS: Melt the butter in a small sauce pan or in your microwave. Add all other marinade ingredients. Stir well and remove from heat. Cut up the chicken into 10 pieces (I reserve the back for making stock). Place chicken into gallon ziploc bag. Pour 1/2 of the marinade over the chicken. Zip bag and manipulate it to coat each piece of chicken well with marinade. Set rest of marinade aside for basting later. Allow the chicken to marinate in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours. Prepare charcoal grill. When the coals are hot and ready, place chicken on the grill and cook on each side until done, basting often with the remaining marinade mix. Cooking takes about 20 minutes on a side to get the chicken properly done (longer if cooked far from coals, indirectly). Serve with grilled vegetables, green vegetable or a classic sour cream/yogurt cucumber mint salad. ENJOY

NUTRITIONAL INFO: Makes ample marinade/sauce for 10 pieces of chicken. Each serving of the marinade only contains:

88 calories
9.2 g fat
1.87 g carbs, 1.2 g fiber, .67 NET CARBS
1.3 g protein
17.9 mg sodium
35.7 mg potassium
12% RDA vitamin A, <10% all other macro nutrients

Looks delicous :)

For such a simple marinade, it really is delicious. I've done this on beef before, too, and it's very nice on beef.