Lemon Roasted Chicken for a Weeknight Skillet

Set out lemons, baby potatoes I used various colors, and cherry tomatoes before you start Lemon Roasted Chicken for a Weeknight Skillet. The batch is written for 6 people.

Count on 30 minutes of prep, 1 hour of cooking, about 1 hour from the first measurement to the plate.

Ingredients Method

What goes in the bowl

For the Chicken & Vegetables

• 2 lemons
• 10 baby potatoes I used various colors
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 2 onions I love roasted onions so I get a little crazy
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 carrots peeled or unpeeled
• 3 sprigs rosemary
• 6 sprigs thyme or as much as you feel like picking
• 2 sprigs oregano
• 1 whole chicken whatever size you’d like and would feed your people
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter can use olive oil instead or omit
• kosher salt
• ground black pepper

For the Pan Sauce

• ¼ cup lemon juice use the juice from one of the lemons above
• All the liquid from the roasting pan

How the cooking goes

1. Warm the oven to 375°F.
2. Cut up all vegetables into approximately ½ – ¾ inch pieces. As long as the potatoes are roughly the same size, all is good. Place them in a 2 ½ quart baking dish, or whatever you have. You just want it to be small enough that you have a good 2 inches of vegetables on which to place your chicken. This will keep them from cooking too fast.
3. Pick and chop the rosemary and oregano, toss on top of the vegetables. Add the picked thyme, black pepper and a generous three-finger pinch of salt or two.
4. Zest one lemon over the vegetables. Keep it to one side to juice for the pan sauce if making.
5. Mix the vegetables.
6. Thinly slice half of the other lemon into rings. Squeeze the uncut half over the vegetables then then put the squeezed lemon inside the body cavity of the chicken. Waste not, want not!
7. Working gently, remove the skin from the breast of the chicken. Start towards the larger end of the breast and work your finger between the skin and the breast. You make a little windshield wiper motion with the finger as you slowly detach the skin all the way down. Once it has been detached, slide the lemon rings between the skin and breast.
8. Truss the chicken (the one pan roasted chicken video can help!), and place on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle salt on the chicken skin, add the butter and chicken stock, and then bake in a preheated oven until the chicken registers 165°F in the thickest part of the thigh. The time will vary greatly depending on the size of your chicken but will most likely be at least an hour.
9. In the last 15 minutes of the chicken cooking, place a sheet pan in the oven to preheat if you are going to finish your veggies in the oven.
10. Let the chicken rest 10 minutes before serving. If you are not going to make a pan sauce, dinner is ready! If you are, then keep going.
11. Tip the remaining liquid from the baking dish into a medium sauté pan. Reduce liquid until it has a sauce-like consistency, approximately 2-3 minutes. It will run off your spoon and coat it rather than just pouring off like water.
12. While your sauce reduces, pour the vegetables onto the preheated sheet pan and place them back into the oven.
13. When your sauce is reduced, add the lemon juice and boil just 30 seconds more. Taste for salt, adding more if needed.
14. Slice the chicken, pull the vegetables from the oven, pour on that delectable sauce, and enjoy!

After it comes off the heat

Cool the pot before it goes into the refrigerator. It reheats gently on the stove the next day.

If you want another plate from Chicken, open Air Fryer Chicken Tenders for a Weeknight Skillet and Chicken with Shallots for a Weeknight Skillet.