Whole30: Thai Basil Chicken

Hahahahahaha oh man! Good one, Kate! We almost believed you.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm feeling great right now! I went to the gym last night and ran for 20 minutes straight which, if you know me, is quite the feat; I am not a runner. But ever since last night I have felt really good. I feel skinny and not in the "I haven't eaten for days and I'm starving" way. In a good way. #Day12

BUT come on! I can think of at least 20 things right now that taste just about as good as feeling skinny feels, if not better. Have you been on pinterest lately? There are about one million recipes that I'm dying to scarf down right now and if it weren't for the Whole30 I would do it. Kate, your argument is invalid.

Now, if Kate Moss has said "Feeling healthy and good about yourself is worth not stuffing your face with treats every day" that may have been a legitimate argument. Not as catchy, but more true.

Anyway, you probably came here for a recipe. So here it goes:

I found this recipe for Thai Basil Chicken on the (you guessed it) Whole30 website! It's by @wholefork. If you're like me then you love Thai Food, which can be a hard food genre to swing on the Whole30. So, I was excited to give this recipe a try.

Thai Basil Chicken

1/2 Tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1/8 onion, chopped
4 oz boneless chicken chopped into bites (Again, left overs from Butterflied Chicken)
1/8 cup coconut aminos
1/2 red or orange bell pepper chopped (gross)
1/2 yellow zucchini shredded
Handful of carrot shreds
Handful of fresh basil

Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Sauté onions and garlic until they turn translucent. Add chicken and aminos and cook until chicken turns white, stirring every 2 min. Add veggies and mix with chicken and sauce. When veggies have softened to your liking add fresh basil and stir a few times until basil slightly wilts. Salt and pepper to taste.

I left this recipe pretty much how it was (besides the bell pepper) since I didn't really know how it should turn out. I guessed that the carrot and zuccini were supposed to act as noodles. Wishful thinking.

Instead of explaining what went wrong I'll just show you.

This is what @wholefork says the dish is supposed to look like:



Now, I know that my pictures aren't exactly professional, but let's take a look at what my dish looked like:



Do you see any discrepancies? The differences don't end there (I assume, since I've never tried her dish). Basically, it tasted terrible. I have some thoughts on why: The chicken I used didn't really taste good in the first place which kind of ruined the dish. I also may have overcooked the vegetables which made them slightly mushy instead of noodle-like. It wasn't great.

However, I was able to eat most of what I made by putting Ginger Sauce on it. This sauce saves a lot of things, apparently.

I'm giving this recipe a big *FAIL because not even basil could save it.

*I attribute all failures to my shortcomings, not to the recipes themselves.

Whole30: Butterflied Chicken

Day 6! Does this seem like the longest week ever to anyone else?

One thing I forgot to mention about the Whole30 is that after the 30 days you are supposed to gradually reintroduce the foods that you've been abstaining from back into your diet. This will tell you how the different types of food affect your body. However, I do not plan on becoming lactose intolerant or developing a gluten allergy within 30 days. I'm a whole milk drinker and bread lover and nothing can change that! Right?

Today, I want to talk about the first recipe I made on the Whole30: Butterflied Chicken by @clean_eating_journal.

Recipe as found on the Whole30 website:

3 large carrots, peeled and chopped into 1″ chunks
3 medium onions (white, red, or a medley of both)coarsely chopped
3-4 sweet potatoes peeled and chopped into large chunks
6 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled
Coarse salt + pepper
1 orange
1 whole chicken
1 Tbsp fresh or dry thyme
4 Tbsp avocado oil or ghee
1 lemon

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Fill the bottom of an oven safe high-rimmed dish with onions, carrots, sweet potatoes. Add a dash of salt + pepper, and 4 crushed garlic cloves. Slice half of the orange into rings, peel, place on top of the vegetables. Discard the peels. Butterfly the chicken by removing the backbone with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. Lay the chicken skin side up on your work surface, and apply firm pressure with your hands to flatten it. Rub the chicken with the 2 remaining garlic cloves, salt, pepper and thyme. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables. Squeeze lemon and the remaining half of the orange over the chicken. Drizzle oil or ghee over the chicken and vegetables. Cook for 1 hour, or until done.

While doing my paleo research I read that cooking a whole chicken can provide meat for up to 10 meals, so that was my main inspiration for trying out this recipe. I had a whole line up of chicken recipes I wanted to try and this seemed like the easiest way to get started.

First of all, when cooking an entire chicken, make sure it's completley defrosted. Otherwise you will end up with an icepick and a stick of dynamite up the chicken's you-know-what trying to get hack away at a solid chuck of ice. Tip: Apparently, this takes more than one day so plan accordingly.

To butterfly a chicken (I had to look this up on youtube) you hold the tail and use kitchen sheers to cut up either side of the backbone, removing the bone. Then the guy on the video removed the breastbone or keelbone by some act of wizardy that I failed to duplicate. Good luck. Smash the chicken down, put it over the veggies and pop it in the oven.

Bad News: My chicken cooked unevenly, I had to cut some off and put it back in the oven, and it took much longer than an hour. This made the vegetables a little soggier than they were supposed to be.

Good News: It tasted alright, the skin was pretty good, and I was able to save quite a bit of chicken from it.

More Bad News: The chicken I saved tastes funny and kind of ruins the dishes I use it in. I don't know if this is a result of the chicken being freezer burnt or of not waiting til it defrosted all the way. I'm guessing it's my fault and not the recipe's.

All in all I'm calling this recipe a Sucess, though a small one, because I learned how to butterfly and cook a whole chicken and it gave me a lot of leftovers.

Honestly, how do people eat paleo all the time?