Why we dump butter on our chicken

Most people didn't stop eating butter because they wanted to. They stopped because a generation of nutrition advice told them they had to.

In this episode, Nicole and I walk you through a real Sunday dinner at our house — bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs basted in grass-fed butter and avocado oil, an arugula salad, cooled rice for the kids, and a scoop of kimchi on the side. We cover why the skin stays on, why butter earns its spot back on the plate, what glycine and butyrate actually do inside your body, why cooled rice behaves differently than freshly cooked rice, and why a fermented food on the table is doing more work than most people realize.

The framework is the same one we keep coming back to: protein anchor → fiber base → healthy fats → optional carbs calibrated to your own tolerance. Master that, and butter isn't a guilty pleasure. It's how the meal holds together.

This isn't a diet-rules showcase. It's what eating well actually looks like when a naturopathic doctor makes Sunday dinner for his family.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, you guys. Wanted to welcome you back into our kitchen. It's a Sunday evening. I just got back from Arkansas. I was there for a couple days, which by the way, if you haven't been to Arkansas, we checked out University of Arkansas with my niece. Amazing. But it's Fiatville's amazing. So got back today, didn't want to do a full grocery run um to several stores. So I kind of went with our tried and true CDA chicken. So um first Why is it called CDA chicken? I was just gonna say that. So we call it CDA chicken because um my our family has a home in Court Alain, um, which we've spent time there with our family. And um CDA chicken's always our go-to because it feeds a lot and it's super quick. After we've been on the lake all day, we can come home and just kind of whip it together. So um, this is another one of those times that I was like, I just want to do something quick and easy. I didn't want to do a full grocery store run. So this is what we're doing, and I will give you, I'll tell you what else we're doing along the way. So we get um boneless, not boneless, I'm sorry, bone-in, skin on chicken. Notice I said boneless because I was so used to always doing boneless and skinless chicken. But Dr. Chad here has taught us that really having the skin on makes it more flavorful and the good fat is great for you. So I always choose to get now um bone-in skin on. So I'll show you how I make that. Um, and he can talk a little bit about why the skin is good for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, well, she's breaking that down. Let's talk about the bone in skin on. So, hey, the skin's back on the chicken. Let's do it. The reason why is because, first of all, the flavor profile is definitely better. At this year, for sure. Yeah, and we try to do it so that it's nice and crispy. I mean, who doesn't like some crispy chicken skin? But there's some really cool health benefits, actually. You know, a lot of people are taking collagen powder. And when we're not eating the way that nature intended, maybe we actually need collagen powder as a supplement. But when we're eating the way that nature intended, we're gonna get natural collagen. We're gonna get all the cool kind of amino acids that are in places like tucked in around bone, all the sort of connective tissue there and the skin. There's some really amazing amino acids that we don't really get in other places, like glycine. Glycine is amazing amino acids, great for things like sleep, but it's also really important for the building block of our glutathione. Glutathione is like our cellular antioxidant superhero. Antioxidants, remember, kind of reduce a certain type of inflammation in the system. And we really need um glutathione to make that happen. And there are uh glutathione is basically uh a tripeptide, meaning it's it's made from three different amino acids. One of those amino acids is glycine. So um you get great glycine in chicken, especially with the skin on, bone in. Also, I think there's a little bit of a flavor profile that happens with that. We get some marrow minerals that kind of get into the meat in the in that area, but it's a great source of general protein.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I do get organic chicken, chicken thighs, um, for sure. Like I'm definitely we we talk about good better best. So I think anytime you're cooking at home, you are winning. You're winning. So don't beat yourself up. But like I choose to do organic chicken thighs. So um I just put them on a cookie sheet with um parchment paper, and I will show you how I baste them. Um I use Kerry Gold butter, and again, this is grass-fed. And I think sometimes for people, this is more expensive than butter at Walmart or, you know, whatever. It's just, but you can get a three-pack of this at Costco. And again, we have no affiliation with any of these places. I'm just saying what if I have time, if I have time and I'm at Costco, I'll grab it. If I don't, then maybe I just try to get organic or something. But any any butter is good, not margarine butter. And then we use avocado oil. And so Chad can talk about um why we always have avocado oil next to the stove and um olive oil. And so depending on how high we cook things, determines if we use avocado oil or olive oil.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Avocado oil has a higher smoke point than olive oil. So if you're cooking at a higher heat, olive oil is gonna be a better way to go. And I think we do, I mean avocado oil. And uh, I think Nicole's gonna do a blend with some butter as well, which has a pretty high smoke point. Also, butter, a lot of people don't realize it's a great source of fat. It's like it's like basically 100% fat. Uh, but this is usable fat. Remember, this is kind of a fat that your DNA and your physiology knows what to do with, as opposed to like a seed oil fat from like corn oil or soy an oil or something like that. Um so butter also has some butyrate in it. Um it so butyrate is one of the short chain fatty acids that makes up sort of our symbiotic relationship between us and our gut microbes. So, our gut microbes, we've got this amazing relationship with them where they will consume some of the little fibers in our food that we can't really break down and digest, but the bacteria can. So, in the bacteria, it breaks down those fibers. So remember, we call the healthy bacteria basically like a probiotic. A probiotic consumes a prebiotic. Prebiotic is basically its food, and then it produces a postbiotic. A postbiotic is like a short chain fatty acid. That's one of the postbiotics. And butyrate is one of the most amazing short chain fatty acids in our gut cells, utilize that short chain fatty acid as like a fuel source. Butter, all this has already sort of happened in the buttermaking process. You actually get a nice little dose of butyrate with butter. We're gonna talk in a little bit with the arugolous salad. We're gonna put a little um what kind of cheese is it? Parmesana?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Parmesana and Parmesana cheese.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Parmesana cheese. Parmesana cheese, because of the sort of bacteria that fermented to make the cheese have a really nice shot of butyrate in there as well. So nice little gut health feature. But back to the chicken, what I was mentioning earlier. Chicken has uh it's really dense in protein. I usually recommend with most people who are trying to support their metabolic health. We want to have with each meal about 35 grams of protein minimum. And one chicken thigh gives you about 25 grams of protein. So, you know, I'm probably gonna have like three, uh, but McCole might have one, one and a half, well, which will get you right there at that 35 grams of protein. Um, but then you want to, you know, eat the skin. You want to nibble on the little connected tissue all the way down to the bone. That's where you get all that collagen and all those cool micronutrients are all kind of tucked away in there.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

So again, that's I feel like you are like a caveman or cavewoman eating off the bone. Like we're so we don't do that anymore. So you kind of can gnaw on it. So um I think that's great. But and it is way more flavorful. Um, if you don't want to do it with the bone, and I've done this with skinless, skinless thighs, and you can do a whole different like Italian theme. You can put brucetta on the top with Parmesan cheese too. You make it the same way, and at the end you just add bruschetta, which I get it from Trader Joe's. It's the bomb, doesn't have good oils. I know, good, better, best, and then you put the parm on top. So you can do that too, which I know some people are really have an aversion to the skin. We don't, so you can always go that route. But now I'm gonna prepare it. So I put the chicken on the cookie sheet, and then I melted the butter and the um olive oil. So I just get my hands in it and I I just put it on the skin. It makes it so crispy and yummy, and I just rub it all over and have every one of these. And honestly, you guys, I grew up in the I mean, I graduated from high school in the 90s, so lift it up a little bit. Um, I mean, those of you who know the snack wall era, and you know, it's all about like fat-free and carbo loading. And I mean, I get it. We wanted to steer clear of the fat, and I would have never dreamed that I'd be dousing chicken and butter and olive and avocado oil, but um, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So let's talk a little bit about the difference between uh dark meat and white meat. So thighs are obviously dark meat, which is by far my preference. I think the I think breast meat is pretty bland personally, but some people really like it. No problem. Super solid source of protein, no big deal. Keep that skin on. Um, but you get some extra things with uh with dark thigh meat like this. You get some some extra iron is in there, some extra B vitamins, which is really important for like energy production. So you get some extra goodies in the dark meat that you don't quite get in the white meat, but it's just as a pure source of protein. White meat, breast meat, all good, no problem. But I think the flavor profile, frankly, is a lot better with thigh meat as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

I do too. And and again, you can flavor it however you want, meaning you can put any seasoning. I've I've dabbled with that too, because I think I'm an over-seasoner. Chad probably would say I am sometimes. But um I I mean, now we just we just do this, and then salt pepper is the best because we have different sauces that we can add to it after it's done. So we'll talk about that too, because our kids like different sauces and whatever you're in the mood for. And again, like I said, you can make it to your liking. I mean, you could add chimichuri sauce at the end if you wanted to. Um we just do the whole like the again, the tried and true CDA chicken. It comes out super crispy, like it's been fried or something.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

And um, I don't know if we made that super clear, but CDA is the abbreviation for court dane.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

And so we this is just baked chicken. There's nothing extra fancy that we call CDA chicken. It's just we made it for a whole group of people while we're visiting in Court d'Alene, and it was a it was a total of crowd pleasers. So now us in our whole extended family uh all refer to it as CDA chicken. And by the way, this looks like we're like having people over. That's just our friends coming up. That's just for our our family. Um, our oldest son's coming over and he eats enough for like like two grown men. So it looks like we're feeding a whole like group of people, but no, it's just uh a few of us.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

If you would look in our our last night, Chad barbecued two tri-tips for himself and our oldest son and his friend. And guess what? We have enough leftovers. So tomorrow I'm like, oh great, I'm gonna go and get um shrimp at Trader Joe's. I get this great wild shrimp, and we'll do surf and turf, like maybe tacos or bowls tomorrow. So we always make enough, definitely protein to have for the next day. And he takes it to work too, and so it's a win-win. So any butter I have left over, I always like I never waste it. So it's just going on there. And again, ladies, I'm speaking just to ladies, because I know again, if you were in my day too, it's like, oh gosh, we got to steer away from fat. But butter is good. And I, I mean, my grandmother always cooked with real butter, and um it's amazing stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

The fat that's in the butter, the fat that's in the skin, by the way, the the fat that comes from chicken is like 45% monounsaturated type fat. And that that's a pretty similar profile to olive oil. I think a lot of people don't realize that. So it's a great source of fat. It's a very usable source of fat. It's very satiating. When we have a certain amount of fat in our meal, we have satisfaction. We don't feel like we have to keep eating and eating and eating. That's what I mean by it has that nice satiation effect, and it's and it and it tastes good, which is nice also. So um, so yeah, eat the fat.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Um, so we again we always have like fresh salt and pepper, or not fresh, but um what's the salt called?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

It's just coarse mortar's salt.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Not my butt. Okay. Hi. Okay, so um yes, morton salt, and then um and then just ground pepper too. So I just I kind of heavily salt it. Because again, and if you don't love the skin, you could always take the skin off, but I'm telling you, it's so good. Um, so I kind of heavily salt and pepper it. I don't put anything else on, and I am I'm a seasoner, but this is just amazing as is. And then so cooking temperature-wise, I do 375 for 40 minutes, and then the last um, so for 40 minutes, 375, and then I heat it up to 425 for the last 10 minutes. I don't know what's going on with our oven. We did a remodel a couple of two years ago and they've never really worked. So we we all you have to you know your oven. So we bump ours up to 385. So always make sure you properly don't want to dry it out. So um that's what I do. I think if you have a kick in oven that doesn't have issues, 375 for 40 minutes, the last 10 minutes for 25, and then that's good. So you pop this in the oven, and then you can do whatever else you want. And again, if you want to do noodles or something like that, that's totally fine. Um we always have a pot of rice going, so the rice is already done, and now I'm just gonna make the salad and I'll show you the sauces that we're gonna have as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

The rice is for those in the family that could handle the carbohydrates, like our 20-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter, who could hammer some rice and be okay with that. Also, a little something about rice. Um when you cool rice after it's been cooked, the carbohydrate changes to a resistant starch. A resistant starch is one of those prebiotics that we talk about. Remember, the prebiotic feeds the beneficial bacteria, the probiotic, and then the probiotic produces the postbiotic, like butyrate with different short chain fatty acids, which is part of the symbiotic relationship between us and our gut microbes. So you still have to take it easy. Um, for somebody like me who is fairly carbohydrate intolerant, I can't get away with even, you know, the cooked and cooled rice very much, but it is better. Uh, it's better as a resistant starch. So when you have that opportunity, it's a little bit better way to get in some. So the chicken is baking in the oven. And so now let's talk about the arugula salad.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

And again, I make this at the very end and I get this from sprouts. You can get arugula anywhere. Again, I get organic. And apparently I read this weekend if you can buy it in a bunch, it's more flavorful. I don't know where you can buy it in a bunch, but um, maybe a farmer's market or chemist or something like that. So I'm gonna I'm gonna look for that. But I always have these on hand too because um they have a they, I don't know, they last for a while, and it's a quick, easy way to just grab your greens and we just put and put onions on them, uh, or onions on the salad and parm. Julia likes a certain dressing, but normally we kind of toss it with something, and then there you go. Last night Chad made cucumbers with olive oil and lemon juice, and whenever that's amazing to you. We always try to have some kind of veggie.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

And so I actually made the cucumber salad with olive oil and vinegar. Any kind of vinegar, what did I have? Um, we prefer to have apple cider vinegar. We just didn't have it. And so we use um some red wine vinegar. What's really cool about red wine vinegar, it's got acetic acid or any kind of vinegar, actually. They all have acetic acid. Acetic acid is really helpful to blunt the post-meal glucose spike. So that's one of the advantages um using vinegar in different things. So I made like a very simple cucumber salad to slice with the cucumbers and mixed up just a little mixing bowl, some olive oil, um, about a two-to-one ratio of olive oil and vinegar, throw in some salt and pepper, a couple dashes of garlic powder. Um, and that's pretty much it. Maybe some Italian spices I threw in there and good to go. Just kind of mix it up, quarter with the cucumber, mix it up with a spoon. It's super good. And similar to last night, we'll make um a little dressing, or maybe we're gonna use a dressing or make a dressing.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

I mean, good, better, best. Chad's a dressing maker, not me. I don't want to spend my time chopping up garlic and there's like 50,000 ingredients that he likes. He'll do it. I don't want to do it. So I'll show you. Here's the one I use from There's like five ingredients. From um, yeah, what? Fred um sprouts. And it's really good. And there's um it's good oils in it, just olive oil. A lot of times, FYI, they'll say that they use olive oil, but if you read the back, there'll be canola oil or swimming oil or something like that. This is only olive oil in here. Um and you do have to take it out like 20 minutes ahead of time.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So it cut those out.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, otherwise the olive oil will kind of solidify in the fridge. So I use this, and again, um, I use these red onions. They're, I don't know, I'm sure you could get it, you can chop them up yourself. These are from Sprouts. I don't even want to do that. But I mean, let's be realistic. If if you want to be do everything on your own, that you are like a you're like an A plus student. I'm not. So I just again I feel like if I'm cooking at home, I'm doing the best I can. And um, I get these, yeah, these are what they are Cleveland red onions, but we probably shouldn't have to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

They are super easy to pickle, which we'll definitely do that in a video in the future. Well, and my sister does that super easy. Good better and best. Sometimes you just gotta buy them store butt.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

And then um, our daughter, I think I shared this on the last one, this ranch dressing from Primal, too. She loves that. So I don't, I don't toss it all. I I put a little bit out for her. She can do her own thing. And then here's always a go-to, just olive oil, red wine vinegar. And I get this, I always have this on hand. It's just lemon juice, straight lemon juice from Trader Joe's. I get that because I can always, I don't even want to sometimes squeeze a lemon. So there you go. That's that. And then um, I literally dump the arugula in here and I will doctor it up a little bit. I'm gonna with some parm. I'm gonna toss perm in it, and then I I do say this is really good, actually. This is from traders.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Let me talk about the parm for a sec. As somebody who's mostly cow dairy free, I can get away with maybe a little bit of gooe cheese. Um, I can do a little bit of parm. Um, the age, like the really, you know, super AIDS cheeses, I seem to tolerate pretty good. I've got certain things that I can tell if I'm tolerating the dairy or not. And I seem to tolerate a little bit of this. You get some pretty cool things with the parm. You get um uh that butyrate that we talked about in butter, you also get this butyrate uh in this kind of cheese. You also get some K2, vitamin K2. This is kind of a very cool little kind of relationship that's in cheeses, especially this kind of cheese. Vitamin K2, we typically have to make in our gut. We get K1 for things like vegetables, and then our gut microbes convert the K1 into K2, which is really important for bone health. Lots of other things, gut health and many other things. But vitamin K2 is sort of the glue that keeps the calcium in the bone. Vitamin D tells the calcium to go into the bone. Vitamin K2 is sort of the glue that keeps the calcium in the bone. So bone health, but also in this kind of cheese, you get some calcium, so that's a nice little synergistic relationship. Um, but then you get something, here's a little fun fact. There's something called umami. Some of you might have heard of umami. Umami is basically a um kind of a flavor profile. You know, there's like different tongue sensors where we can pick up sour and sweet and salty and stuff like that. We can also pick up umami. Umami has a really cool little metabolic benefit. Umami is very um satiating. This I mentioned with fat is satiating. Umami is also really satiating. So just a little bit of some kind of food that provides some umami, which definitely an aged cheese does, again, you get that satiety factor. It also helps to decrease the amount of overall food you're gonna eat and certainly balances your overall metabolic health.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Okay, and if you happen to go to Costco, I get this at Costco when I'm there. Um, but this bad boy does not expire till September 21st, and we've we'll definitely use it by then. So this is definitely a good bing for your buck um to go to Costco. And then I do this is so bad. A friend turned me on to this. This is from Traders, and it is, I'm I'm gonna try to pronounce it, a garlicky and spicy season blend. And I put it on everything. You could put it on your chicken, whatever, but I always put it in salads too. Um, it gives it a little kick. There's garlic, um, sea salt flakes, parsley, red bell pepper, red chili um pepper, and then I just throw some tarm in it and I'll mix it up a little bit, and then again, we'll put some aside for our daughter because she likes the ranch. And then um one thing about arugula is it sometimes Chad laughs at me that I always make a salad for like 50 people, but um, it really kind of shrinks down too. So um just so you know, and and it takes on a dressing really you don't want it um kind of wilty, so be mindful of that too. But I just do this and then we will toss it and add some more of this.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Arugula is considered uh bitter green, which any kind of bitters or bitter greens are has some compounds in them, which are actually helpful for digestion.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

One other thing, I know this is getting uh long, but um, I'm gonna share some sauces that we use. I haven't even tried this yet. This is the yum-yum sauce from primal, but again, it has good ingredients. Um, and it says for steak chicken and shrimp. So I got this for tonight. Okay, so this is an option. Good oils in that. Um, we always have the buffalo sauce on hand. Again, primal, no affiliation with them. But um, and then the barbecue sauce. They have different flavors, but this again, if you're going for if you're counting your carbs and stuff, this is a lower carb one. Um, this one is not, but my kids love this and it's gluten-free, we're gluten-free. So um, this is really good though.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

So the Japanese a little bit of sugar in that one, but um, not very much for those of you who can handle a little bit more carbohydrate, then uh it's early as tasty. My go-to is definitely the buffalo sauce.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

And then we're gonna add um kimchi to it too, but it's amazing for your gut. So talk about that a little bit because Chad and I like it, our kids don't really eat it. But um, this again is from Costco. You get a huge thing of this. Cheap and put the probiotics in here are really good.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

So yeah, fermented foods is something that's been around for a really, really long time. We get lots of cool benefits from fermented foods. There's uh probiotics that are naturally in there. Um, since it's made from ingredients that uh things like vinegar, uh, you get some acetic acid. Remember, I mentioned acetic acid earlier with vinegar. Acetic acid really helps to decrease that post-meal glucose bike so it keeps the insulin down and doesn't get in the way of post meal uh blood sugar dysregulation. Um also you get the probiotics in uh in kimchi, any kind of fermented food. And it doesn't have to be a big burdensome amount, it could be a couple tablespoons of it. Doesn't have to be, you know, a huge amount. Some people like it, some people don't. Kimchi, we really like the whole flavor profile. It's got that kind of spicy, sour um sort of thing, but you can get away with. Um other sources of fermented foods as well. But kimchi is super good.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I don't know. Khefir, kefir, however they say it.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Kiefir lab.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

This is um coconut kefir. So if anyone doesn't want to do dairy, this is great too. We get this as sprouts, but I'm sure they have it other places. But this is awesome too. So just if you don't like the kimchi thing. Um and I like kimchi like with a bite of chicken or something else, not to eat on its own necessarily, but sour proat's good too. So and then finally, if you're a desserty person, like we have berries that we usually have, or and our kids like mangoes too. So China and I will probably pass on the mangoes because I think they have a little bit more sugar in them. So we'll probably opt out for the berries, but we also get chocolate and nuts from Trader Joe's that we put on top too for a little treat. Okay, so here's a final product. Um, the chicken beans. But you can see the chickens nice and crispy, so it feels like you're eating fried chicken, but you are that and then again, everyone can have their own Dippian sauce. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Okay, so there you have it. There's the finished meal. Remember, the protein, each thigh has about 25 grams of protein, so that's about 50 grams of protein. Rather nice, a rudless salad. Remember, what's cool about the dark meat from a thigh as opposed to the breast meat is you get some iron, you get some B12, you get some Z, some selenium. Remember, the iron that you get from chicken is what's called heme iron, which is way more bioavailable than the kind of iron that you get from vegetables. So lots of cool things going on here, very supportive for your metabolic health. Bon appetite.