Diya's Food Diaries

SMOTHERED (IN A GOOD WAY) CARAMELIZED ONION CHICKEN

I love having guests over for meals. I spend hours planning the menus and poring over cookbooks looking for new things to make. Most of my guests make their appearance on Shabbat where I inevitably make some sort of chicken as a main course. Recently, bored with the ones I have been making I came up with this one, a mixture of a few different recipes I saw with some added Gush Gourmet twists. This chicken came out so flavorful- the onion flavor really permeating down into the chicken- that when eaten as leftovers later that week it didn't have any of that old chicken taste (yuck!) that leftovers sometimes have and just tasted deeeeeeelish!
Here is how I made it:
6 onions sliced thinly (alot, I know, but crucial)- The best way to do this is to use a food processor. I know no one wants to make their food processor dirty but the thinner the onions the easier they will caramelize and the processor does this the best.
4-5 Tablespoons onion soup mix (my preferred brand is Knorr who now makes a no MSG version for only 5 shekel more that is still great and obviously healthier)
3-4 tablespoons olive or canola oil
1/4 -1/3 cup packed brown sugar
salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika
maple syrup
8 chicken bottoms cut in half
Mix the onions, onion soup mix, brown sugar, oil and pepper in a bowl. Put a layer of onions on the bottom of a big roasting pan. Lay the chicken on top and sprinkle with garlic powder and paprika and then cover with the rest of the onion mixture. The chicken tastes best if you let it marinate in the onion mixture overnight as the onions release their juices and add lots more onion flavor to the marinade but you can cook it as is as well. If you let it marinate overnight, increase the cooking time by another 45 minutes.
Cover the chicken tightly with foil and bake at around 350 for an hour and a half AT LEAST. I find people just do not cook their chicken long enough. The longer you cook it covered the more tender the final product will be. No chicken of mine gets cooked for less than an hour and a half covered, sometimes I cook it up to 3 hours covered (that's usually when I forget that I have something in the oven). Uncover, drizzle on some maple syrup and bake for another 1/2 hour or so basting at least once with the juices.