Herb Roasted Split Chicken Breast -- end-of-the-week dinner hack

It's that time of the week again -- we departed from the excitement from the last weekend; lunch rotation has made a full round from sandwich to wraps to salad to leftover casseroles, and dinner had gone through beef/pork/salmon/tofu, yet the next grocery trip is not quite here yet. You wanted to make something delicious but am already somewhat worn-out. It's high time, to pull out some chicken breast from the freezer, again.

A life-changing trick I learned recently was to defrost meat in the fridge with added spice and herbs, which forms a pseudo-marinade -- The flavors sink in while defrosting, and no additional time is needed at all. 

This dish takes less than 5 minutes to put together. The flavor profile is refreshing, with certain level of complexity -- all deeply satisfying. The only reason I am not making it more often is that I can not always find bone-in breasts at our co-op!

Herb Roasted Split Chicken Breast

serves 2

• 2 bone-in skin-on split chicken breasts
• 2 Tbsp olive oil 
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• dash of paprika
• 1/2 tsp freshly chopped tarragon
• 1/2 tsp freshly chopped oregano
• juice from a lemon half

1. If starting with frozen chicken: put everything in a zip-block bag and defrost in the fridge. If starting with fresh chicken: pat dry chicken breasts (I stopped washing my chickens after reading about how it actually spreads more germs); rub the breast with olive oil, and sprinkle with everything except for the lemon juice.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drizzle chicken with lemon juice if using fresh chicken.
3. Roast the chicken in the pre-heated oven for about 45 -- 60 minutes. The skin should be crispy without going to higher temperature.

We enjoyed it with a simple arugula salad, and it was TASTY! 

Nutrition:

Each serving of chicken breast offers 282 calories, is a good source of protein, vitamin C and Niacin. More details can be found here.

Cost:

The main cost of the dish would be the chicken breast, which was $2.49/lb at our co-op. The estimated cost per serving is about $3.5 (including the salad greens).