Cajun Chicken Breasts

ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts or however many you want to cook
cajun seasoning
water
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. butter/margarine
salt and pepper to taste

hardware:
deep pan with a lid

procedure:

1. Bring enough water to come 1/3 of the way up the sides of the chicken, lemon juice, and margarine to boil in the pan.
2. Coat one side of the chicken with the cajun seasoning of your choice. I like Zatarain's Blackened Seasoning.
3. Once the water mixture is boiling, add the chicken to the pan seasoning-side down. Season the other side now that it is facing upward in the pan.
4. Once water begins to boil again, reduce heat to medium and cover.
5. Cook for 11 minutes, then flip the chicken breasts and cook for another 11 minutes on the other side.

comments:
I say 11 minutes on each side, but I still always cut my chicken open to make sure it's done. It's pretty hard to time it exactly when chicken breasts come in widely varying sizes and thicknesses. I'm also paranoid about food poisoning, although I've never had it.

This might seem like a weird way to cook chicken, by cooking it in a salted broth, but I find that it keeps the chicken very juicy and it gets the flavor all the way into the meat of the chicken.

Another note: you can use ANY spice or spice combination you want with this basic recipe. I make chicken like this every single week. To make lemon pepper chicken, I up the lemon juice to enough to cover the bottom of my pan, then use lemon pepper seasoning. I also enjoy using Grill Mates Montreal Chicken seasoning in this recipe. Change it up, experiment. I do this often with garlic, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar in the pan. Go wild.

Side note: Trevor swears he doesn't like any chicken that isn't breaded and fried, but he will eat this.