Today’s post is an old one that I moved over from my old blog because I always needed it.  And you probably need the recipe for The Best Chicken Ever too.  (And darn it, I just remembered that I forgot to buy soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, and cooking sherry when I went grocery shopping today.)

Here is the recipe for the best chicken ever. For the record, since I like to give credit where credit is due and it is certainly due for the best chicken ever, Mel emailed me the recipe and she claims to have gotten it from Rachael Ray. My version is a smidge different from the one Mel originally emailed me.

Okay, here are your ingredients.

You need: vegetable oil (I usually use extra virgin olive oil, but I was out, so canola this time), cooking sherry, sugar (in that shiny canister), onion powder, and soy sauce (yeah, my bottle of soy sauce turned out to be gone when I looked in the fridge, so I have to confess that I’ve been using the little packets for the last couple of weeks).

In a beautiful glass baking dish (I love glass baking dishes), pour three tablespoons of cooking sherry.

Add two tablespoons of oil. Look how cute that oil is, floating there on the cooking sherry.

Now, add two tablespoons of sugar. I’ve used brown sugar when I was out of white (yeah, it sounds like I never go grocery shopping here) and it turned out just fine.

Next, add 1/4th of a cup of soy sauce. (I counted and it turned out to be six of those little packets.)

Sprinkle the dish with onion powder. You know, I should mention that you don’t have to keep all the ingredients separate in the pan like I did. I just thought it would look better for the pictures that way.

Stir until your sugar is mostly dissolved. If you are right handed and trying to take pictures, stir with your left hand while you take the picture of yourself stirring and then put the camera down and stir in a normal manner.

Doesn’t that look like a delicious marinade?

Now, your next goal is to put in as many frozen chicken breasts as you can fit in the pan so that they touch the marinade and then stick one more on top that doesn’t touch the marinade because it is just so good that you will need that fifth chicken breast.

Cook in the oven for about half an hour at 350 degrees. I flip the chickens over a couple of times so that they get lots of time in the sauce. It is like a little chicken hot tub.

Serve with rice and a vegetable. And yes, it has to be rice. Forget pasta, potatoes, or stuffing. It must be rice. See how I’ve dumped the sauce over the rice there? That is why it has to be rice. Do not throw out the marinade. As long as you cook the chicken in it and the chicken is all the way done, then you can eat the marinade too. And you will want to because it is just that delicious. But if you are more clever than I am, make a different vegetable instead of cauliflower so that your entire meal isn’t white.

Allow me to confess that this is Matt’s plate. Because I had already cut my chicken into little bits and dumped a LOT of marinade on top of the cut up chicken (it soaks in better when it is cut up), my rice, and my cauliflower. Matt is more moderate than I am and he only likes extra marinade on his rice.

Here is my recipe:

3 tablespoons dry sherry

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

onion powder

Four or five fresh or frozen chicken breasts

Dump all of it into a pan and cook in oven for about half an hour at 350 degrees.

And here is the original recipe from Mel:

3 tablespoons dry sherry

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

small handful of sliced scallions

1 pound chicken breast tenders

Put all the ingredients into a plastic bag and shake. Cook chicken tenders on the grill for about seven minutes.

In my version, you can eat the marinade because it cooked along with the chicken. If you want to grill your chicken instead, make sure you boil your marinade on the stove to kill the salmonella. Or don’t eat it. But that would be a waste of the best chicken marinade ever.

Oh, and I only measure for this recipe when I am taking pictures for all of you. Usually, I just dump the ingredients into the pan in amounts that look right. It comes out perfectly every time, making me think that I am either very good at eyeballing (not entirely likely, but I don’t totally suck either, since that is how I do all my cooking) or that this recipe is very forgiving.

Enjoy the deliciousness.