Ina Garten's Flavorful Trick For Perfect Chicken And Potatoes In One Skillet

If you're looking for a low-effort way to take your chicken and potatoes to the next level, Ina Garten has you covered. Her flavorful trick for making the perfect chicken and taters in one skillet is to bake the marinated protein first before coating your sliced spuds in the fatty juices collected at the base of the pan. Then, you simply return the whole lot to the oven to crisp up.

Garten's roasted chicken and potatoes recipe also calls for marinating the skin-on chicken thighs in buttermilk first to maximize their juicy texture, before laying them down in a lightly oiled skillet. After topping the chicken with mustard and herbs, she bakes the meat until it's virtually cooked through and removes it from the pan. Finally, she coats her potatoes with the flavorful juices from the bottom of the skillet and puts the chicken back on top before baking everything until tender.

This staged technique is awesome for two reasons. Firstly, the potatoes soak up heaps of delicious flavor from the aromatic ingredients in the marinade and the fat that's rendered out of the chicken thighs during their first bake. Tossing the taters in this schmaltzy liquor coats each spud with an intense hit of savory yumminess from the get-go, creating a complex flavor profile. Secondly, you can add even more spices and aromatics into the potatoes at this stage, such as crushed garlic and chili flakes, to elevate them further.

Once your chicken is deliciously golden, remove the thighs from the pan and let them rest so the juices can redistribute themselves throughout the meat while returning the potatoes to further crisp up in the oven. The existing fat in the skillet will help to create crispy, crunchy edges and the extra burst of heat from the oven will thicken up any juices, transforming them into a flavor-packed jus. If, however, you prefer softer potatoes with a creamier consistency, simply skip this part and enjoy your yielding taters along with your perfectly baked, herby chicken.

This one-skillet cooking technique gives you plenty of leeway to be inventive with your chicken seasonings, allowing you to enjoy a different-tasting meal each week that combines the same elements with a slight twist. Why not try a classic lemon and garlic Greek-style marinade, brush over a sweet and spicy barbecue glaze, or baste with some fiery tandoori masala? The opportunities are endless but the same simple technique applies, making it an absolute cinch to get an imaginative chicken dinner on the table each week. Finally, because everything cooks in one oven-safe pan, you'll only have a single skillet to wash up after dinner, which is ideal if you value convenience.