Schwartz Smokey Texan Marinade Chicken with Roast Veg and Pearl Barley

I'm working my way through a rather delicious selection of Schwartz herbs, spices and marinades.  I love my food to be hearty, balanced and full of flavour.  I also like to try new things so am happily 'making do' with what I have in the fridge.

My latest creation is Smokey Texan Marinaded grilled chicken breasts with a selection of roasted vegetables and pearl barley.  Pearl barley (the stuff you usually find in hearty soups and stews) is my latest favourite accompaniment.  If I could eat it on it's own as a meal, I would.  That's how much I love it.

The Smokey Texan Marinade sauce is really easy to make as you combine the sachet contents with 50ml oil, 75ml water, mix it all up then pour over the meat to marinate it.  I had chicken breasts in the fridge so I used these instead of beef or pork which are the other two meat suggestions.  Schwartz recommend to leave the meat over night to marinate but I only left it for about five hours.  It's so quick and easy to make that you could easily do it first thing in the morning, ready for dinner time.

Move ahead five hours in time (and after pouring myself a glass of vino) I set the oven to 180 Celsius.  I would have used the actual fan option, but this option is no longer in operation on my poor overworked Hot Point cooker.  It's like playing Russian Roulette when I'm baking because the results sometimes differ.

Next I measured out a cup of pearl barley and rinsed it off in a colander.  This is what I do with most grains.  I then dropped the rinsed pearl barley into a small pot and added two cups of water to, put it on the stove and turned up the heat to bring it the boil.  Once at the boil, I reduced the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes until the pearl barley was tender.

I had a aubergine, three peppers (capsicums), sugar snap peas, carrots and baby corn in the fridge.  I chopped these up and seasoned them with rock salt and Schwartz Season-All.  It really does season everything well and I use it often.

The veg roasted for 40 minutes (20 minutes, remove from oven and mix the veg around, cook for 20 more minutes).  During this time I took the pearl barley off the heat once it was cooked and then drained it, returned it to the colander and put that on top of the pot to drain further.  

I took the chicken out of the fridge after the first 20 minutes and then grilled it on my George Foreman in the last 5 minutes of the veg roasting in the oven.

While the chicken was cooking I put the pearl barley and veg, that was just out the oven, onto my plate.  After making sure the chicken was cooked perfectly, I took it off the grill plate and added it to my dinner plate.  Meal done!

Verdict on the sauce: Very tasty!  I would recommend letting it marinate for longer as suggested but even in that space of time it still had a good flavour.  You could also BBQ your meat to get a more smokey flavour but with winter fast approaching you may want to leave that for next summer.  That said, we still have a BBQ (braai to those South African's out there) each Christmas and during winter ... because we can.

RRP for the marinade sachet is £1.29 and more info can be found at here at the Schwartz website.

Enjoy!

Ally x

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Note: I was sent a selection of Schwartz Herbs, Spices and Marinades to sample and create meals with.  All ideas, opinions and views are my own.