Cooking can be a breeze when you’ve got a straightforward recipe to follow, like this garlic chicken traybake from Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers book. The meal is brimming with crispy juicy chicken, soft vegetables and roasted potatoes in a garlic sauce.
Having prepared this dish in less than 10 minutes and it taking 35 minutes to bake in the oven, this resulted in one of the most delicious traybakes – and I might even say I liked it more than Mary Berry’s chicken traybake.
Rick includes lemons in his recipe, however, I chose to omit this ingredient and instead use a bit more oil. This recipe caters for six to eight people, but the ingredients can be halved to make fewer servings as I have done, reports the Express.
Ingredients:
- Four tablespoons olive oil
- 12 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in
- Juice of one to two lemons
- Five garlic cloves, chopped
- Small bunch of thyme, leaves stripped from stalks
- Three courgettes, cut into thick slices on the diagonal
- Two fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced
- Eight new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into thick slices
- Sea salt and black pepper
Method:
I began by preheating my oven to 200C Fan before starting with the prep work.
I added a small amount of the oil to a large frying pan and placed it over medium-high heat. Working in two batches, I fried the chicken thighs for a few minutes until the skin had taken on a deep golden colour.
As the chicken was browning, I combined the garlic, thyme, and the remaining olive oil in a bowl. If you’re using it, add the lemon juice now.
Next, I arranged the courgette, fennel and potato slices in a large roasting tin, drizzled over two-thirds of the lemon and oil mixture, then tossed to coat the vegetables before seasoning with salt and pepper.
For those utilising the full quantity of ingredients, be careful not to overcrowd the roasting tin as this will prevent even cooking split between two tins if needed.
Once the chicken was prepared, I placed the thighs on top, skin-side up, drizzled over the leftover garlic oil mixture and seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper.
Then it was time to bake for 35 to 40 minutes – until the chicken skin was crispy and golden and the vegetables underneath were soft.
After 35 minutes, I checked on the chicken and veg and found them perfectly cooked.
This traybake was absolutely scrumptious, and considering it takes less than 45 minutes in total to prepare, there’s no reason not to make this one of your weekly meals.