Description
A creamy, salty, saucy chicken dinner made with chicken thighs or chicken breast. Serve with rice, pasta, or potatoes – it’s DELICIOUS! Just… please don’t burn your hand.
Ingredients
Scale
- 2 tablespoon olive oil, plus a little more
- A pint of cherry tomatoes (or a few less), most of them cut in half
- Sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper, a few times throughout the recipe
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano (fresh and chopped is also nice if you have it)
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- A splash (3 tablespoons or so) red or white wine, (water or chicken stock if you don’t want the booze)
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
- Optional to thicken the sauce: 2 teaspoons cornstarch or potato starch + 1 tablespoon water
- Caselveltrano olives, torn in half to garnish (or regular green olives or capers)
- Fresh parsley, torn to garnish
Instructions
- Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grab a large 12-inch skillet that can go from the stovetop to the oven. If you don’t have a big skillet a big oven-friendly pot will also work!
- Place tomato halves in the skillet and drizzle with two tablespoons olive oil. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper and toss it all together to combine. Place in the oven to roast for 15-20 minutes, stirring once. Roast until the tomatoes have sizzled off some of their water and begin to brown slightly. Remove from the skillet from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees F. Tansfer all of the tomatoes to a small bowl. We’ll incorporate them later. *** Leave a pot holder or towel on the skillet handle so you don’t forget it’s OVEN HOT and reach for it bare handed. Trust me on this one!
- While the tomatoes roast, season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper.
- Sear the chicken in the same pan the tomatoes roasted in (no need to clean it). Add an additional few tablespoons of olive oil to the pan and place over medium-high heat. Sear the chicken (I had to do this in two batches) until golden brown on both sides. Don’t worry about cooking the chicken all the way through. It will spend more time in the oven to cook through and tenderize. Place the seared chicken in a bowl or plate with a lip and set aside.
- Reduce the heat to low. By this time there should be some nice browned bits across the pan. That’s fantastic. That’s flavor! Add chopped garlic to the pan and stir constantly around the pan for 1 minute. Stir in the oregano and red pepper flakes. Return the tomatoes to the pan along with a splash of wine, water, or stock. Use a wooden spoon to scrape all those browned bits off the bottom of the pan as the wine cooks off.
- Stir in chicken stock and heavy cream and bring to a low simmer.
- Return the chicken pieces to the pan, nestling them in the sauce. Place the skillet in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes.
- Remove from the oven (keep that pot holder on the handle!). If you’d like to thicken the sauce here’s what you do. Remove the cooked chicken pieces to a clean plate. In a small bowl whisk together cornstarch or potato starch and water and whisk it into the hot sauce in the skillet. If the sauce doesn’t thicken, place it over a low burner and whisk until thick, just a few minutes.
- Return the chicken to the sauce and top with torn olives and fresh parsley.
- Serve over rice, pasta, couscous or potatoes. Serve next to roasted green beans. It’s up to you!