Chimichurri Chicken Bites Recipe

Now, I don’t know if you know but Chimichurri in Argentina is just like so common. It is the most popular condiment and it is an all purpose terrific recipe to know. You’re going to love having this one in your repertoire. It’s a lot like family recipes for marinara sauce or for curry. Each family has their own way of doing things. This is just my basic take on Chimichurri but you can mess around with it yourself at home. Make these ones and then play around with the herbs and spices yourself. See what you like and then you will have your very own Chimichurri recipe.

What’s cool about it is that it serves as both a great marinade for any protein, chicken, pork, beef, fish, anything and it makes a great dipping sauce too. And I just put in two big handfuls of flat leaf parsley, that’s my green base for the Chimichurri. Now, I'm going to add some depth to the herby flavor in there. I'm going to put in some six sprigs of fresh oregano here. Oregano actually needs joy of the mountain in Greek. You see there, when you make this infront of your friends, you can sort of sound very impressive by knowing that. Joining the mountain is cool though, I love that, it’s pretty.

Oregano is widely available in a lot of markets. All of the herbs are usually kept kind of together in the center of the proteus department and they’re really pretty inexpensive. You can get quite a good shelf life out of fresh oregano. It’s very perfumey yet kind of earthy at the same time. It’s so wonderful. Nice, strong, bold flavor. That’s why Chimichurri is so perfect for quick cooking because it has so many bold, strong flavors in it. You don’t need a long time for any meat to pick up a ton of flavor from it. You don’t have to let it marinade.

So, I’ve got six good sprigs there and I’m just pulling the leaves off of the stem because the stems can be kind of woody. Same thing with fresh thyme, fresh thyme is one of my old time favorites. I just love it. Same thing with this you just want to strip the stems because they can be a little woody. And you see, I’m using several tablespoons here. A lot of flavoring punch! There we go. Good to go there.

Now, we need some onion in there. I'm going to use half an onion because these are good size. Now, it’s gone in the food processor right. See, you don’t need to spend a lot of time chopping it. I'm going to crack a couple of cloves of garlic here and one from my roasted red pepper salsa because I’ll need it for that too. Knead it twice, process it once. Okay, this two are going to go in my Chimichurri. And I’ll save that one there for my salsa. You know what, I almost forgot my dried spice. I need my paprika. I'm going to eyeball that one tablespoon and cayenne. Now, you can adjust the heat level however you like it. I like about a teaspoon. Spicy but not crazy. And I need a teaspoon of salt. And I’m going to strain the oil into the top. I need about a cup of that and a quarter cup of vinegar. Let’s get the lid on here and the way we go.

Pour the olive oil in. You want about a cup. This is meant to be loose. But because of all this oil, it stores really well just like a pesto would. Looks pretty good to me. Gorgeous! Now, that’s going to be for the dipping sauce and this is going to be the marinade of our chicken. So, I’m just going to pour a little bit in here to turn the chicken in it. And I’ll put the rest in my dipping bowl.

Now, the chicken tenders are perfect for quick cooking because the shape is there for you. I just make one quick cut right across the middle and you have this wonderful chicken bites to just skewer. Drop those right into the sauce. Give it a coat and get them right on the grill. I use my hands for this. It’s the easiest utensil for this because you really want to just coat this evenly. It smells great instantly! It’s only been about 10 minutes and it smells great and these are looking fantastic. And if you remember, I told you it’s perfect for any proteins. You could put it with tofu, it would be delicious.