comment icon 98 more comments Just please take note of what you’re seeing in the picture above. Golden brown skillet chicken ✔️ with a red wine pan sauce ✔️ on a layer of golden caramelized onions ✔️ with fistfuls of happy red California GRAPES ✔️. What to even say right now? It’s so regular + easy and so fancy + pretty all at the same time. The perfect dinner for company! This recipe was inspired by one of my favorite-est ways to make chicken, which is this Skillet Chicken with Bacon and White Wine Sauce situation. But there are a few key differences – with this updated version, I’m going for a few warmer, cozier herbs, swapping white wine for red, and switching out the bacon for grapes. I mean, if you wanted to still add the bacon, I definitely wouldn’t be mad about it and I might even awkwardly ask you if I could come for dinner to try a little bite or five hundred. Prettyplease. But really, whatever you decide about the bacon will be just fine because there’s only one star in this show and its name starts with a big ol G. 😍 (oh hai derr GRAPES.) Buckle up – I’m going to get geeky on you for a second. Did you know that 99% of fresh table grapes that are commercially grown in the US are grown in California? Yet another reason to love to that sunny paradise land. And bonus: whether you like red, green, or black grapes, all of them are a natural source of antioxidants and other heart-healthy polyphenols. Health vibes, people. Health vibes. 💪 Side note: in case you are wondering how polyphenols became a part of my vocabulary, I have my experience teaching a fourth grade nutrition unit to thank for that. Seriously, some of the random fourth grade tidbits I know about elephant seals and volcanoes and the science of rocks… you just never know when you might need those little nuggets of info. I mean, maybe you’ll use that word polyphenols someday when you become a food blogger. Who can say? Obviously, for every lesson in that unit, I’d make all my students pronounce polyphenols in unison so we could all feel really smart together. Wanna try it? Everybody together on three… one, tw- No, I’m annoying. I’ll stop. Seriously now: Vitamin K. Antioxidants and other polyphenols. 90 calories. TASTY BITES OF JUICY GOODNESS. The list of benefits is just straight up 🍇🏆💯🍇🏆💯! Let’s talk about the GCO (grape cooking options). First option: you put them into the pan when it goes into the oven and they get roasty and soft. The good news about that is that they simmer in the sauce, so they’re juicy and delicious and they go together with everything on your plate really nicely when served with some kind of rice or quinoa as a side. It just works. The only potentially meh factor with this approach is that they lose some of their color. Which leads us to the second option. Second option: you put them into the pan just during the last few minutes of baking so they retain their beautiful color and most of their crispiness. They stay beautiful and vibrant and crispy, just how we like grapes to be. If you’re into a more crisp grape, this is the way to do it. What you see pictured in this post is the second option – I added them at the end of the baking time so they’d keep some nice color. But both Bjork and I were really impressed with how good the grapes were with the first option (roasty, soft, less color). I think we might have even preferred that in terms of taste and texture. It was like seeing grapes in a whole new light. You know what you like, so you choose how it’s done. Either way, it’s going to be Yum City because GRAPES. Golden brown chicken. Caramelized onions. I mean, honestly. Really hard to go wrong. Thank you again to today’s post sponsor, Grapes from California, which represents California’s amazing table grape growers that are responsible for growing that bag of delicious grapes that is sitting in my fridge right now.👌 4.8 from 13 reviews
