The One Pan Dinner I Wish I Knew Sooner

In this video, I'm going to show you my well-tested recipe for Greek-style chicken and potatoes. This is a one-pan dish that only takes about 15 minutes of active prep time. And because of the way that it cooks, it delivers truly unique flavors and textures that you just can't get in any other dish. To get started, I'm going to grab just over 2 lb of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, which should be about four large pieces, give or take. And if you're wondering about breasts, definitely don't because they are way too lean. And with the long, slow cooking process that we're using here, they'll get super dry and they'll be really unpleasant to eat. Now, to get these chicken thighs prepared to be cooked, I actually need to start by coming around the outside and cleaning up the excessive chicken fat and any extra chicken skin. Which for these standard-issue cheap chicken thighs that I got at the grocery store, they actually have quite a lot of this. They're cheap for a reason, guys. They really haven't had a lot of extra butchering. And if we left all that stuff on there, it would render excessive chicken fat into the potatoes and it would make the dish eat really greasy. So, to clean these up, I'm just going to take a little paring knife and trim right along the edge where the skin and the chicken start to line up. You don't have to be crazy about this. You just want to make sure you're cleaning up anything that might be considered excessive. And I also want to flip this over onto the backside because there can be a pretty excessive amount of fat that's hanging on the inside of the thigh. So, I'll just zip that out. And I think that looks really pro, actually. We've got the right amount of skin. It's proportional to the amount of meat and it looks good. So, once it's fully cooked and rendered, it's going to present beautifully. Once I've got four thighs that are nicely cleaned up like this, I'm just going to come back and give them a quick seasoning with salt. Just a light little two-finger pinch per thigh, per side. Then, I'll let the salt sit on the outside of the meat for about 60 minutes or so. Now, I've explained this many times in many videos, but I'll say it again. Dry brining ahead of time helps the meat hold onto its moisture during cooking and it helps it be more seasoned throughout. This is particularly important for this Greek chicken and potatoes recipe, though, because we're going to be cooking the chicken thighs with medium heat for a very long period of time. So, there's a really high probability of them getting dried out just through sheer evaporation alone. So, adding the salt, like I said, helps it hold onto all of that moisture. So, after that 90-minute medium heat bake, it comes out super juicy and succulent instead of mid and kind of dry and unsatisfying. So, I really wouldn't skip it. Probably an easier way would be to plan ahead, actually, and salt these the day before. So, that way they're nice and brined so that you can save yourself that hour of prep time day of. Once these are salted, I'm going to throw them in the fridge to hang out while I prep everything else. Next, I need to make the thing that makes this entire dish taste good, which is the

Greek marinade. So, for that, I've got a medium bowl here. And into it, I'm going to add 50 g of extra virgin olive oil, 5 g of dried oregano. I would not sub fresh because they're very different ingredients. Then, I'll add in 5 g of ground black pepper, 2 to 3 g of dried thyme. You could sub in fresh thyme for that if you don't have dried because the two ingredients are much closer than oregano. Then, I'm going to take 45 g of garlic cloves and smoosh it with a garlic press. By the way, this is the final production version of the Lagerstrom Home Goods garlic press that I've been working on for well over a year and a half now. The one that I've been telling you guys is coming out soon, but then like another month goes by and then another month. But, I can really say at this point, it's coming soon. They finished the production on these things this week and now they're putting them into boxes and they're going to be available hopefully within the next five weeks or so. So, if you want to know about these when they come out, again, I'll throw a link down in the description. You can sign up for the mailing list and you'll find out about them the first day that they come out. If you want to use garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, you could sub in I would say 10 g would be a good match for 45 g of fresh. But, honestly, you should just get a big bag of fresh garlic cloves that are pre-peeled. Even if you don't eat a ton of garlic, you can throw the extra stuff that you're afraid is going to go to waste into a zip lock baggy and keep it in the freezer until the next time you want garlic. Behind the garlic, I'm going to take a large lemon and rip the zest off with my microplane. To do that, I'm just rolling it forward and pulling it back so I don't dig too deep and get the bitter rind underneath the outer part of this zest. Oh. Now, there's oregano all over it. No. Then finally, I'll take the juice of half of that lemon, which is about 20 to 30 g. You can go a little bit higher on the lemon if you like things pretty tart, but you have to be careful. Lemons can get pretty sour. Then, once everything's in the bowl, I'll just jump in with the whisk and stir to get it combined. Somebody out there right now in the comments is like, "That's an insane amount of garlic for only four chicken thighs. " That's true if you're thinking of this in terms of the garlic being raw. You just got to keep in mind that this is going to be slow roasted for almost 90 minutes. And in that time, this really pungent, hot, fresh garlic flavor is going to be slowly transformed and melted into this sweet, tender, roasty garlic flavor that is way less intense and honestly way more delicious. Okay, once we have a herby garlic paste here, I'm going to set this aside, then grab two magically pre-peeled potatoes

from my potato drawer and get these chopped up for the dish. For these, I want to cut the potatoes through the widest part. So, to think of it, if you're a person, instead of cutting it straight down the middle like this, you want to cut the potatoes in half like this. This is going to give us the most uniform wedges. So, for that, zip. Then, I'll take those halves and cut them in half and then I'll cut those halves into three to four chunky wedges like that. And if you're wondering why I'm cutting these so chunky, it's basically so they don't get overcooked. We need to time the potato cooking with the chicken cooking since this is what I call an integrated dish, meaning everything cooks together in the same place at the same time. So, you need to scale things in a way so that the heat penetrates them over the same time period, basically. One more time, I'll cut this in half and then cut that half into some giant chunks. By the way, this is a russet style potato, which I think is the best for this dish. I tested Yukon Golds as well, but they are higher moisture, lower starch than a russet. So, they don't really crisp up or take on any meaningful browning, which brings a lot of flavor. The one thing that Yukon Golds have going for them, though, is that they are high pectin, which means that they hold onto their texture really well after long cooking. But, also they have high moisture, so sometimes they are pretty easy to get overcooked. Anyways, I tried Yukon Golds a bunch of times. They were fine, but I liked russets better. So, once I've got these russets cut into beautiful 2-in wedges like this, I'm going to scoop them into my oil and herbs and garlic. Then, I'm going to go over to the fridge, grab my salted chicken, and drop that into the bowl. Again, this has been in the fridge for about 45 to 60 minutes. Then, I'll just jump in and toss to get everything combined. And I especially want to make sure that the garlic is getting evenly spread out, especially on the chicken because it for some reason it tends to congregate on the backside of the thigh. And that's not the part that's going to be exposed to the dry heat of the oven. And I just like to make sure that the garlic is a little bit more biased towards the skin side because that's the side that's going to get nice and sweet and roasty. But, look at that. That looks so delicious. And [snorts] it smells so lemony, too. I'm hyped about this right now. Also, if you're wondering how far in advance you can toss all of this to combine to marinate, I would say not that far in advance because once there's salt and oil and herbs, especially on the potatoes, moisture is going to get drawn out and it's going to change the cooking environment pretty significantly. So, I wouldn't really mess with it. I wouldn't go longer than maybe an hour in advance. Okay, once everything's tossed to combine here, I'm going to grab a 9 by 13 metal baking dish or a cake pan. And then I'm going to diligently lay out my

potatoes in three flat rows like this. If you're wondering about using a ceramic baking dish, if that's all you have, it can work. I prefer the metal baking dish because of the heat transfer, especially when I go to put this in the oven. I'm going to be putting it on a pizza steel, which I always keep in my oven. If you don't have a pizza steel, you're totally fine. Just kind of a nice to have because so much extra heat can get transferred into the bottom of the food. That only not only helps evaporate the chicken stock that we're going to be adding in a second, but it also helps fry up the potatoes and gives them this nice golden brown darkness that's really, really flavorful. Ceramic baking dishes are really good for keeping heat localized, but they also tend to create steam and trap moisture, which isn't really what we want for this. Also, if I didn't mention it earlier, I think the proper amount of potatoes is somewhere between two and three large russets. It kind of just depends on how large you cut them and how many can fit in your particular pan. This is about 2. 5 russets, actually, now that I'm looking at it. Everything's nicely snugged in and lined up, so we're looking good. Then, I'm going to take my garlicky chicken thighs and lay those out on top in a way where there's not a ton of overlap with the chicken. And again, if there's a bunch of garlic sitting on the bottom, I'll just migrate that to the top side. And then I'll snug that up, move these around so that they're not touching. And yeah, that looks looking pretty good. The final step here is to add in 150 g of store-bought box chicken stock. Or if you have homemade flavorful chicken stock, by all means use that. And I'm just going to pour that evenly throughout so that gives me a solid base layer of chicken stock throughout the entire tray. This is the weirdest part of this entire recipe, for sure, but it's also the part that makes it taste the best. Having the potatoes sitting in chicken stock like this helps them braise or it cooks them with wet heat early on, which makes them nice and tender. Then, it reduces into this very, very concentrated roasty chicken thing that sticks to the bottom of the pan and helps fry the potatoes. And it comes together into this just like I don't even know. It's like chicken goo that has all of the chicken drippings, potato starch, all of the herbs, all the lemon. It's hyper concentrated and it's just like super, super tasty. a weird way to do it, but it's actually the thing that makes this dish so sick in the first place. So, stick with me. It's really going to work out. Once the stock is in the pan, I'm going to move this thing over to a preheated 350 oven. And I'm going to bake this for about 70 to 90 minutes. No convection, though, because that hot air is mainly going to get blown right on top of the chicken skin, which is going to make it get really dark golden brown and dried out well before the chicken itself is cooked through or the potatoes are cooked through. Now, while that cooks, I quickly want to thank Flair Espresso for sponsoring this video. This is the Flair 49 Pro manual espresso machine, and I think it's pretty freaking cool because it makes great tasting espresso while giving you a very enjoyable tactile analog coffee making experience. I think this thing is for anyone who wants to have good tasting espresso at home or for coffee nerds who really want to dial in the best possible tasting espresso shot at home. I like this thing because it feels really tactile and heavy-duty. That's because it's made out of cast aluminum and stainless steel, and moving the lever up and down feels heavy, feels analog, and it just adds one more layer of enjoyment to the coffee making experience that you don't get when you just click a plastic button on a Nespresso machine. The thing that I like about this is that you don't need to be a barista to get a great result. You can use store-bought pre-ground coffee and throw it into this pressurized portafilter basket, then throw some boiling water into the cylinder and just lower the lever managing the pressure on this simple little pressure gauge. So, if you want to have some fun making what I think is pretty delicious cafe quality espresso at home, use my code BrianXFlair49 to get 10 bucks off your first order. I'll throw a link in the description. Again, the code is BrianXFlair49. Ooh. And after about 90 minutes or so, I'm going to come back and take a look at the chicken. I'm going to pull it out and check the temperature of the chicken. Now, a lot of people will tell you that chicken is done cooking or at least it's safe to eat at 165° F, which is true, but I don't think it's good to eat until it's reached about 185° F. That's because for chicken thighs, they're actually better the further you cook them. It's kind of like chuck or brisket or something like that where you're melting all of the internal collagen and rendering all that intramuscular fat, and that just makes it more juicy, more tender, and almost shreddable. So, I'm going to check the temp real quick, and we are at about 184, which is perfect. Oh my god, dude. It just smells so special. Roasted lemon, that's like the main thing that you get, and I don't know of any other dish that really has that smell, and it just makes my mouth water. I'm so excited to eat this, but we can't serve it right away. We actually have to let this rest for about 15 to 30 minutes for two very important reasons. Number one is it will allow the pectin in the potatoes to fully set up. At this point, they are super tender because we cooked them with wet heat and then roasted them for a while longer, so right now, if we were to put a spatula in there and scrape them up, they would probably crumble and fall apart. Cooling them lets that pectin come back together. And then, the more obvious second reason is that it allows the juiciness in that chicken to kind of set into the protein. If we were to take a bite right now, all that juice would run out and the chicken would eat a little bit drier. So, I'm going to give this about 20 minutes, and I'll check back then.

20 minutes later, this thing's looking good to go. The potatoes are fully set. We got roasty chicken. The sauce has kind of been absorbed into those potatoes, and you certainly could just scoop this out onto a plate and serve it right now. But, there is one little finishing detail that I think makes this dish that much more pro, that adds about 3 to 4 minutes of work, but it's really, really going to be worth it. So, the first step is just taking the chicken thighs off of the potatoes and setting them aside on a plate here. Now, I've got a big serving platter, and then carefully scoop out my potatoes in a way that doesn't break them down, and lay them out on this plate in a nice pile. As you can see, these potatoes are just completely saturated with roasty garlic and reduced chicken stock. Ooh, man, they look so good. The potatoes alone are worth making. Okay, as you can see though, there is a bunch of flavorful stuff left in this pan, especially all around the inner edges here, and we don't want to waste that. We can actually turn this into a little bit of delicious sauce to put on top of the chicken. So, what I'm going to do is put these potatoes over here into a low oven. I've turned it down to about 175° I'll put the chicken in there, too, just to keep it warm. Then, I'm going to take my pan and add in maybe about 50 to 75 g of store-bought chicken stock, and then I'll come back with a wooden spoon and scrape up all that nice brown stuff around the edges and get any fondy bits that are on the pan scraped up and dissolved into the rest of the liquid here. It would be a real shame to let all this roasty chicken stuff go to waste. This is definitely not going to be a step that you see happening at Greek Easter celebrations, but uh I don't know, the chef boy in me just really wants to convert maximum chicken flavor into the final dish. Once I've got all that roasty chicken stuff scraped up, I'm going to transfer this over into a little saucepan here. I'm going to bring it up to a really quick simmer and then reduce it down for I don't know, maybe about 2 minutes or so, just enough to kind of get it re-thickened up. There is some potato starch in here from those roasted potatoes, so that's going to help thicken it. We don't want to go too crazy. We're not trying to make this a thicker sauce. We're trying to make more of a last-minute lemony roasty chicken jus. As you can see though, there is a little bit of olive oil and chicken fat sitting on top, which is fine, but to get that kind of emulsified a bit and then also just bring a touch of a zippy freshness to this sauce, I'm going to add in just a very, very small amount of mustard, maybe like 3 g. If you go too far, the sharpness of that mustard is going to get in the way of the dish, and honestly, it's going to taste a little bit mustardy, but a little bit, I don't know, it just brings some life to the final dish that I like a lot. You can leave it out for sure if you're not a mustard fan. This is Grey Poupon, by the way. I wouldn't sub any other kind of mustard. Make it sure it's nice Dijon. All right, as you can see, it's reducing, bubbles are getting bigger. We're going to let this go for another 60 seconds or so. Again, nothing crazy, just until the sauce can kind of leave a trail when I pass my whisk through it. You can also not do this step. Like I said before, that dish after 20 minutes of resting is totally good to go. It's super delicious, and you could just put it all on a platter right away, and people are going to be very, very happy. This is just sort of another 5% you can add on top to make it a little fancier and a little bit more tied together. Having a little bit of sauce that's on the potatoes and the chicken, it just brings it to another level. It makes the two things kind of more cohesive. Okay, and after about 2 minutes of reduction, you can see the bubbles have started to get big. When I pass my whisk through, I'm leaving a trail. That's how I know it's good to go. So, I'm going to pull it off heat now and get that stuff out of the oven.

One more quick appreesh for these potatoes, too, now that they're fully set up and warmed through. Mmm. — Now, to serve this, I'm just going to scoop my chicken on top of the potatoes like this. Then, I'll take my roasty, mustardy chicken jus and put just a little bit on top. I don't want to drench this dish at all because that will take away from the focus on the deliciousness and textures of the potatoes and chicken. Just enough to kind of wet things and to bring again a touch of zip from that mustard and to turn up the volume on that chicken flavor a little bit. Then, one more final touch is just to add some fresh chopped parsley on top to make it look good and to hit it with a touch more freshness. Ooh, that looks so good. And then, just a tiny, tiny bit of lemon on top. This dish is mainly about the flavors of olive oil, oregano, and lemon. And there we go, dude. To me, that is just textbook beautiful Greek chicken and potatoes. I really think that we got this dish to a point that is quite special. This is kind of a working man's dish, and I've been served it at a lot of Greek family gatherings cuz I used to have a Greek girlfriend when I was in high school. Shout out, Elena. What's up? If you're watching, sorry for being that way. — But yeah, I had the privilege of eating at Greek Easter, and this is one of the things that they served, and it was delicious, and I'm basing this dish off of my memories of that and just trying to turn up the saturation and volume on all of the stuff that I really love about it. Chicken and potatoes, I don't think it gets better than that. I'm going to start with a potato here. Mmm. Man, texturally, that is a freaking dream. It is simultaneously toothsome and firm and creamy and tender. I don't know how it gets that way, but the way that we cooked these with the wet heat into the roast gives you this dynamic eating experience that just texturally is nothing It's not like anything else I've ever made. And it's saturated with flavor. It's chickeny, it's lemony. There's a lot of olive oil flavor. You get all those herbs. And for the chicken, Mmm. Juicy ass meat, check. Well-rendered skin, check. Flavorful, check. It's just really good roast chicken. It's If you guys want to make this recipe, which I really think you should, I'm going to throw the short version down in the description beneath this video, then I'm going to throw you a link to the long version at my blog over at BrianLagerstrom. com, so you can follow along and get a little bit more detail and some really good photos. As always, guys, thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you for sticking around to the end of the video, and I'll see you in the next one.