Recipe: Marmalade Chicken

Last winter after drooling over some food blogs, I sent an e-mail to my canning friend Marcie and begged her to add tangerine marmalade to the lot of jars she planned to prepare for me over the summer. A few months later, UPS dropped a box of sweets on my doorstep -- blackberry jam for Bub, tangerine marmalade for me. The marmalade was so bright and so delicious, it was like sunshine in a jar! It was better than I imagined it to be. No doubt about it, Marcie takes care of those she loves.

The spring semester just began for me, and in an effort to make some decent dinners in the midst of my busyness, I've been relying on meal starters I have stored in the freezer. I thawed some cooked turkey and planned to put together a casserole, but I decided instead that I wanted to make something other than a noodle dish with a heavy, creamy base. I searched AllRecipes.com, my go-to recipe site, and came across a simple poultry dish using up the delicious marmalade. This is the recipe before I modified it:


Sweet Orange Chicken

Ingredients

* 5 pounds bone-in chicken parts
* 1/2 cup orange marmalade
* 2 cups orange juice, or as needed
* 3/4 cup dried cranberries

Directions

1. Place chicken into a Dutch oven or large saucepan. Stir together the orange marmalade and orange juice; pour over chicken. Sprinkle in the cranberries.
2. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink, and the juices run clear. Check occasionally, and add more orange juice if necessary.


The original recipe calls for bone-in chicken, roasting it in the marmalade, but my technique was simpler. I put about 4c. of deboned, pre-cooked poultry in a Dutch oven, then thinned about 1/2c. marmalade with some juice and warmed it on the stove. I poured the warmed marmalade glaze over the poultry and let the whole lot simmer together in the oven for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees. While the turkey heated, I cooked a pot of rice, steamed some broccoli, and made a bit more marmalade glaze to top the final dish. When the rice cooker shut off, I took the turkey from the oven and shredded it, then served it atop the rice drizzled with a bit more marmalade glaze. The steamed broccoli was served on the side.

This dish is reminiscent of a sweet Asian dish. It's so simple and so delicious -- it's a new family favorite!

The down side? I'm out of tangerine marmalade.