By Assistant Editor Ashley

Have you ever heard of cooking chicken in milk? There is a recipe by Jamie Oliver floating around the web with rave reviews and we knew we had to give it a try. It was both easier and harder than I expected, and everyone at the dinner table said the same unexpected thing…

The basic run down of the recipe is:

1. Brown the chicken in lots of butter (or olive oil)
2. Pour in some milk, two lemons’ worth of zest, a cinnamon stick, and fresh sage leaves. Scatter in a handful of garlic cloves (unpeeled
3. Bake for 90 minutes
4. Pull apart and devour

I was a little intimidated by browning the whole chicken but it was pretty simple. Just watch for splattering oil/butter and make sure you get it nice and brown on both sides. This is honestly the hardest part of the whole recipe.

The second part of the recipe was my favorite because you don’t have to peel, chop, smash, mince or do anything to the garlic. That’s a lie, you do have to break if from it’s mama bulb but then you just throw it in as is. No smelly garlic hands for days (yay!) and no garlic press to clean. I also felt that it was convenient to peel off large sections from the lemon instead of zesting the whole thing. I’m all about ease, in case you couldn’t tell. I will say, it did feel weird to pour milk on my chicken though. Those two things feel like they should not belong together.

After you throw it all in the oven you just sit back and relax and let that milk work it’s magic! I whipped up some mashed potatoes while I waited and they were the perfect side dish with all the juices.

I pulled the chicken from the oven and it smelled absolutely divine. The chicken looked moist and tender and smelled like lemon and herbs.  When we divided the chicken and everyone had their first bite I was surprised everyone had the same reaction. Of course they thought it was delicious, but they also thought it tasted Mediterranean because of the lemon and hint of cinnamon.  It’s a fresh, yet comforting recipe that will land in your keeper file. Yeah!

You can find the original recipe here. Photography by Ashley Aikele.