Change Your Life Chicken

What You Need

  • Chicken thighs with the bone and the skin. Yes. I said thighs. That have the bone and the skin. Trust me on this. Adults eat one, hungry adults eat two, and weird picky tiny kids eat a half.
  • Two handfuls of vegetables per person. You can use whatever you have. Options: onion, carrot, potato, green bean, asparagus, leek, sweet potato, and cauliflower. (Avoid mushrooms, zucchini, squash, and broccoli with this method.) 
  • Olive oil, salt, and pepper.

How You Make It
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Not a typo. Five hundred.

Line a baking sheet with heavy-duty foil. Your pan needs to hold your vegetables comfortably – not too close together, not too far apart. Heavy duty is less likely to tear, i.e. to get dirty from chicken grease. Do not use glass. It will shatter. I’d recommend not using any kind of baking dish with high sides because you won’t get the same kind of crisp. Baking sheet… like you use for cookies.

Cut your vegetables, and toss with olive oil, more salt than you think you need, and black pepper. These are the sizes to go for: large bite-sized. Carrots take the longest, so make those thinner than the rest. Consider cooking speeds with the vegetables you choose. The vegetables should cozy right up against one another without overlapping or creating multiple layers.

Peel the skin back from the chicken. Don't wig out. It's cool. You want to generously season both sides of the chicken with salt and pepper, but you want to season under the skin. So pull back the skin, season, and fold the skin back over.

Pat the chicken skin dry with a wad of paper towels. This is how you get magic crusty chicken skin. The best order is to place the chicken skin side down on the vegetables, season, flip, pull back the skin, season, put the skin back, and pat dry. The worst is drying the skin and then realizing you forgot to season the bottom.

Place the chicken skin side up directly on top of the vegetables. Here's what happens: the fat from the chicken skin will seep into the vegetables underneath, imparting flavor and moisture while the exposed vegetables get a tiny bit charred. 

Bake at 500 degrees for 50 minutes. Don't worry if the chicken will be done; it will be. And we don't have to be concerned about the vegetables burning at such a high temperature because they're nestled closely together. The most you'll get will be a few crusty edges, and those are delightful.

Variations
Start with what's above, but once you feel comfortable with how it works, feel free to change it up.

  • Add fresh rosemary or thyme to the vegetables.
  • Rub the chicken (not the skin) with lemon or orange zest. (Rosemary and orange are a heavenly match.)
  • Reinvent the meal with different vegetable combinations: onion, potato, carrot; leek and asparagus; onion and sweet potato, green bean and cauliflower. If you love it, try it. The worst that can happen is it's not great and you won't make it again.
  • Same goes for exotic spices. Go nuts with curry powder, a taco seasoning blend, or whatever you want to try. You won't know if it works until you try.
  • Use chicken breasts with the bone and skin if you must; be sure to bump the time to an hour. I can't vouch that it'll be as good, but I'm not your chicken boss.

Recipe Source: https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/cylc

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