Grilled Chicken Tenderloins (Without The Grill!)
Okay, ya’ll, listen to me here, YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THESE!! Seriously, you are going to absolutely love, love, LOVE these! So you need to make them, alright? Trust me.
This is a widespread copycat version of Cracker Barrel’s grilled chicken tenderloins and they are absolutely amazing, I think they are much better than Cracker Barrels, actually!
I’m not sure where I got the recipe because it is all over the internet, but I got it five or seven years ago and have been making it on a very regular basis ever since with rave reviews each time.
Did I mention that I really think y’all are going to love this? Oh, and I have a truly embarrassing Halloween story at the bottom, what more could you want? ~grins~
You’ll need: Lime juice, Zesty Italian Dressing, honey, and some chicken.
You can purchase chicken tenders or just do like I do and buy boneless skinless breasts and cut them yourself (its cheaper!). The original recipe called just for Italian dressing, but I LOVE this with Zesty Italian!
Oh, and in a pinch you can use lemon juice if you like. I know I usually have lemon juice on hand but not lime. I happened to have this because I made Bananaritas the other morning. For any new readers, Bananaritas are not alcoholic and they are sooooooooo good for breakfast!
Pour in your Salad Dressing.
The original recipe said to strain and discard the spices but i really like them in here and I have never once actually noticed them on the finished chicken. They either cook up or magically disappear. Either way, why add another step if we don’t have to?
I like to mix this up in a mason jar because it is so dern easy that way. You can just stir it up in a small bowl if you like though.
Add your honey..
Add Lime juice.
For some reason I am wanting to speak with a German accent as I do this tutorial tonight. I think I need sleep and lack thereof is making me silly. So in my mind, I am doing this entire tutorial in a German accent. Folks, I’ve gone off my rocker after the day I had today! (By the way, my German accent is learned entirely from one of those Disney Characters that looked like Donald Duck but was actually a distant relative…)
Don’t you just love German chocolate, though? Ritter bars are my favorite….
Screw Ze Lid On Ze Jar!
(give it a good shake)
If you’ve got chicken breasts, cut them into strips.
I used my kitchen shears, by far the greatest utensil known to mankind. This is what I call a “fish and loaves” recipe because the chicken tends to plump up and be extra filling, therefore feeding a much larger amount than it normally would have. I used four chicken breasts and we easily have enough left for another meal (or some great lunches!).
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Voila! Ze Chicken!
Now what I do is put all of my chicken in a big gallon ziplock bag and just pour the marinade in there with it. Then you seal it and stick it in your fridge for at least an hour.
You can do this the night before if you like and just keep it in your fridge until you’re ready for supper. Another thing I have done before is mix this up and get it to this stage and just freeze the whole bag. Then on a morning you are headed off to work just pop the bag in the fridge to thaw out during the day.
After at least an hour, dump the entire contents of the bag into a large skillet.
You are going to be thinking “Wow, this is awful watery, there is no way it is going to look like hers” but oh yes it will!! Hang in there with me, this just takes a little patience (actually it takes about forty minutes or so).
This is how it will look after ten minutes over medium heat. Just hang in there and let it cook.
I keep my stove eye dial on five. Good thing is, you don’t have to fret over this, just go check on it about every ten minutes and turn it and you’ll be fine!
This is after about twenty minutes.
About thirty…now we’re starting to get somewhere!
And around forty minutes the good stuff starts showing up!!
Its getting really thick on the bottom now and this is where I start moving my chicken around a lot, getting it all nice and browned.
In another minute or two that watery stuff will all be caramelized and wonderful….
Like this. It looks black in the pic but its really not. That dark stuff is the carmelized marinade. At this point, I take every piece of chicken and one by one rub it around in that marinade before taking it out of the pan and putting it on my platter.
Like this!!
(It tastes even better than it looks!)
This has so much wonderful flavor that I like to serve it with a simple side dish. Tonight we had it with stewed potatoes that I had just put a little butter and salt on. YUM!
Grilled Chicken Tenderloins
(Like Cracker Barrel’s)
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips.
1 cup zesty Italian dressing
2 tsp lime juice
3 tsp honey
Place chicken in gallon ziplock bag. Combine all other ingredients and pour over. Seal and marinate for at least an hour.
Pour all ingredients into a large skillet and cook over medium heat until liquid evaporates and remaining marinade becomes thick and caramelized. Coat
each piece of chicken in marinade by rubbing it around on the bottom of the pan before removing it
each piece of chicken in marinade by rubbing it around on the bottom of the pan before removing it
*I put off doing the newsletter until this weekend after my little mishap with emails and google yesterday. I figured all of you wonderfully kind people deserved another recipe today!Thank you all so very much for your understanding. I’ve gotten a multitude of emails that are so very kind and reassuring and I cannot tell you how much better today is as a result of that! You are so wonderful. Someday, SOMEDAY, I AM going to figure out how to cook a big old meal for you all, just wait! OOoh, how about an embarrassing Halloween story? Yup, thats just what we need! Here goes…
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Let me tell y’all what I did one Halloween, and this is really pretty embarrassing and out of character for me but hey, its just us I’m talking to, right?
If you’ve read the coconut pie post, you know all about Mama’s accident. She was completely bedridden for several weeks and her spirits were understandably very down. I had never seen Mama anything but upbeat and I took every opportunity to try to cheer her up as best I could.
Then she called me on her cell phone one day and said “Guess what I’m doing?” Mama sounded happy and I instantly perked up. She was all excited because she was actually out, riding in a car, for the first time in weeks. It had been quite an ordeal to get her in the car with both legs in casts but she was sitting in the back seat with her legs up on the seat and looking out the window, and called me to tell me about it. I was thrilled.
“Where are you now?” I asked, all excited.
“We’re in Athens, almost close to your neighborhood”
so I replied “Well come on by and we’ll come out and see you and do the happy dance!”
This really was a big day for us and I was so happy for her, couldn’t wait to see her.
Then I got to thinking, what else could I do to get her to smile, maybe even make her laugh, and help her remember this day?
It came to me….I was about eight months pregnant and it was almost Halloween….
Now y’all, I am NOT someone who likes in any way, shape, or form, to have my stomach touched, caressed, cuddled, or otherwise noticed any more than it has to be whilst I am with child. I tend to be an EXTREMELY modest person as well. So I thought of it, the one thing that would shock my mother (the person who knows me better than anyone) and get a good laugh at the same time.
I hurried into the kitchen and grabbed the first thing I could find to write with and then darted off to the bathroom. When Mama pulled up in the driveway, I went out, walked up to her window with a huge grin and pulled up my shirt just enough to reveal a very pregnant belly with the face of a jack o lantern drawn on it!! (You know, this really is embarrassing to tell…I bet Mama will be surprised I admitted to it and it will make her laugh again today!).
Mama’s eyes got so big and she looked at me and said “Don’t you have a Doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”.
Then we both burst out laughing after I said “OH my God, I do…and I USED A SHARPIE!!”.
Then we both burst out laughing after I said “OH my God, I do…and I USED A SHARPIE!!”.
I found out just how permanent sharpies were as it took quite a bit for that to wear off, but my midwife had a good sense of humor and she had been well aware of Mama’s ordeal and how much it meant to me to get one more laugh out of her on that day!
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And that was a REALLY great day!
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(if you are feeling exceptionally generous today, please go here and vote for Southern Plate. If I win, I’m going to use the prize money to buy myself the special light I have been wanting to use in my food photography!! You do have to register, but its not a lengthy registration and you don’t have to sign up for anything and it IS a great site…and oh I would just love love love to win it..I doubt i will but still, WOW it would be so amazing if I did!!!!!)
Posted by Christy Jordan
on Oct 31 2008. Filed under Chicken, Main Course.
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This is my first time to leave a comment, but this one was too good to not share. My oldest son is a sophmore at Mississippi State University, which is 14 hours away from our home in Richmond, VA. I’m Georgia girl by birth so southern cooking is just the only way to go. I’ve made several of your delicious recipes, including these “grilled” chicken tenderloins. My son called me from MSU wanting an idea for something he could fix for dinner. This is a kid who has never spread peanut butter on a slice of white bread for himself until recently. I told him about this recipe and emailed him the link to your website. I got one phone call to help him negotiate his way through the Wal-mart to buy the groceries, and then another phone call to talk him through the cooking process. He sorta panicked in the middle thinking things were burning. I called him later and he said everything turned out delicious! There was some confusion over the boil-n-bag rice that I suggested as a side dish and the rolls were a bit freezer burnt, but his 3 roommates loved the chicken! I’m so proud, but apparently it takes more than 4 young men to figure out how to make boil-n-bag rice!
Made these tonight…..delicious! I had Lite Zesty Italian and lemon juice on hand so that’s what I used…..turned out great. I will admit, about half way through I was very skeptical, but it REALLY helped that you put the pictures on here of what it was supposed to look like – be patient and they turn out exactly like the last photo! Do yourself a favor and do NOT taste them midway through the cooking process, you won’t like them -it’s amazing how the flavor changes by the end. Will definitely be making these again – I had Bob Evans mashed potatoes and Allen’s green beans with my chicken and it was a super easy, fast, yummy dinner. Thanks Christy, so far everything I’ve made from your site has turned out yummy and was easy! (I’ve made the puh-min-uh cheese like 4 times in the past week, LOL!)
This is one of my family’s favorite chicken recipes! What I like you can substitute if you have to on the lime juice and use lemon. I have used brown sugar in place of the honey, and the chicken turned out fine. A keeper!
I’m planning on making this chicken recipe this week and read that some people had problems with the chicken drying out. As I read the recipe, I was thinking that 40 minutes seemed like a really long time for chicken tenders… I’ll bet it would work to cook the chicken in the skillet with the marinade and all just until it’s done, then pull the chicken out and let the marinade keep cooking. When it’s almost done, add the chicken back in so it gets covered in the sauce and let it cook for a couple of minutes. I wonder if this would work ok! I plan to make it exactly as the recipe says the first time, but if it turns out dry, I’ll try this alternate method the next time. Another solution could be to use whole chicken breasts instead of cutting them into thirds since a chicken breast takes longer to cook.
Just had these for dinner tonight! They were really good
Served the chicken with roasted brussels sprouts and my lazy version of smashed potatoes (poke a couple red potatoes with a fork, toss in microwave, cook until soft, toss in bowl, mash with potato masher, mash in milk, butter, salt, pepper. Just thought of that method today and it worked great!) The chicken turned out WAY better than when I actually grill chicken (always gets burned then). The finished result actually looked (and tasted!) labor intensive even though it definitely was not. My chicken turned out a tiny bit on the dry side, but was still quite good and my fiance who is the self declared Dry Chicken Police liked it a lot. The marinade seemed to leap frog over the gooey stage and went from “runny” to “burned bits separated from oil” so I didn’t have any marinade to rub my chicken around in, but they looked almost like your picture and tasted great regardless 
I’ll have to try the Great Value brand dressing next time, maybe that’s the key- this time I used Kroger brand.
Thanks, Christy
Tomorrow night I’m making your stuffed peppers. I’m just flyin’ through your recipes, aren’t I?
Hi Christy! I made these for dinner tonight to go on top of a big dinner salad. It tasted good, but I couldn’t get the marinade to stick on the chicken at the end. The marinade just stuck to the bottom of the pan and burned. The chicken still ended up tasting good, but it didn’t look as pretty as the pictures. Do you have any suggestions?
These are really good and so easy to make. Thanks for another great recipe.
Okay, I am glad to see I am not alone. Christy, I too had chicken that was slightly on the dry side and didn’t get the sauce look. I had the bits with the seperated oil. What did I do wrong? I am to lower the temp once boiling or something?
Made this receipe last night and it was awesome! Husband and little boy loved them. Thanks Christy! Keep them coming!!!