There is a version of this dinner in every Greek grandmother's oven, and it has not changed much in a hundred years: chicken, potatoes, lemon, olive oil, oregano, and a hot oven left alone to do the work. The potatoes go underneath, where they sit in the lemon and the chicken fat and come out soft in the middle with brown crisp edges, and the skin stays up above the liquid where it can crackle.
What makes it easy at our house is that the oregano, garlic, onion and the rest are already measured and blended in the jar. It's Greek to Me is our USDA Certified Organic Greek blend, and two tablespoons of it does the whole pan.
It is also forgiving, which matters on a Tuesday. Nothing here needs to be timed to the minute. The chicken tells you when it is done with a thermometer, the potatoes tell you with a fork, and the ten minutes of resting at the end is when the potatoes quietly drink up everything left in the bottom of the dish.
One pan, about an hour and a quarter start to finish, and it feeds four generously or six if there is a salad on the table.
Greek Lemon Chicken and Potatoes
Bone-in chicken thighs and chunks of potato roasted in one pan with lemon, garlic and It's Greek to Me organic Greek seasoning, finished with parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
Ingredients
For the pan
- 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 3 lbs)
- 2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
- 2 Tbsp It's Greek to Me organic Greek seasoning, divided
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
- 1 lemon, sliced into thin rounds
- 6 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
To finish
- 2 Tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes (optional)
- 1/3 cup crumbled feta (optional)
- Lemon wedges, to pass at the table
Instructions
- Take the chicken out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before you start and heat the oven to 425°F with a rack in the middle. Cold chicken straight from the fridge browns unevenly.
- Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, 1 1/2 tablespoons of the It's Greek to Me, the smashed garlic, the salt and a good grind of pepper together in a large bowl.
- Add the potato chunks and toss them until every piece is coated. Lift them out with your hands and leave the leftover marinade in the bowl.
- Pat the chicken thighs dry with paper towels, and keep going until the paper comes away dry. Wet skin steams instead of crisping and there is no step later that fixes it.
- Rub the thighs all over with what is left in the bowl, getting some of it under the skin, then dust the skin side with the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of the blend.
- Spread the potatoes in a 9x13-inch roasting dish or a large rimmed sheet pan and pour the broth around the edges, not over the top.
- Nestle the thighs skin-side up on top of the potatoes so the skin sits above the liquid, and tuck the lemon rounds in between them.
- Roast for 35 minutes, then spoon some of the pan juices over the potatoes only. Keep the liquid off the skin. Add the cherry tomatoes now if you are using them.
- Roast another 15 to 20 minutes, until the skin is browned and crisp, a thermometer in the thickest thigh reads 165°F, and the potatoes are fork-tender with brown edges. Chicken goes to 165°F, not the 160°F you may use for ground beef.
- Let the pan sit for 10 minutes before serving. This is when the potatoes drink up the lemon and the juices. Scatter the parsley and the feta over the top and pass lemon wedges at the table.
Keep the skin above the liquid
The broth is there for the potatoes, not for the chicken. Pour it around the edges of the dish and sit the thighs up on top of the potatoes so the skin never touches it. That one piece of staging is the whole difference between crisp golden skin and pale rubbery skin, and it costs nothing.
165°F, and why it matters here
Poultry goes to 165°F. Ground beef comes out at 160°F and people carry that number across without thinking about it. Push an instant-read thermometer into the thickest part of the biggest thigh, not touching bone. Thighs are forgiving — a few degrees over will not ruin them the way it ruins a breast.
What is actually in season right now
The garlic and the potatoes came out of the fall harvest and will keep in a dark cupboard most of the winter. Flat-leaf parsley is still going outside across the Carolinas and will carry on through the first frosts, so cut it with scissors straight over the pan. Gulf and Florida lemons are just arriving, which is good timing for a recipe that wants two of them juiced and a third sliced.
The cherry tomatoes are the honest exception, and we are not going to dress them up as a November harvest — Carolina tomatoes finished weeks ago, so those come from a greenhouse or a grocery shelf. They are optional for exactly that reason. What is genuinely good right now goes alongside instead: collards and kale sweetening after the first cool nights, fall cabbage shredded into a slaw, broccoli and cauliflower coming into the markets, and North Carolina sweet potatoes at the peak of their harvest, which can take the place of half the Yukon Golds if you want them.
Which potato to buy
Yukon Gold. They hold their shape in an hour of lemon and broth and still go creamy inside. Russets are a storage potato built for baking and mashing and they fall apart into the juices here. Red potatoes work too if that is what is in the bag. Cut everything to roughly the same size, about an inch and a half, or the small pieces turn to mush while the big ones are still raw.
On the salt
It's Greek to Me carries a hint of sea salt along with the oregano and garlic, and if you add feta at the end that brings plenty of its own. The half teaspoon of kosher salt in the marinade is deliberately a light hand. Taste a potato before it goes to the table and adjust there rather than guessing at the start.
Make it ahead, and what to do with the leftovers
The chicken can sit in its marinade, covered in the refrigerator, for up to a day, and it is better for it. Do not marinate the potatoes that far ahead though — they go grey. Toss those just before the pan goes in.
Leftovers keep three or four days. Pull the meat off the bones, warm it with the potatoes in a hot skillet rather than the microwave so the edges crisp again, and put it over a salad with a spoonful of yogurt. It is a better lunch than it has any right to be.
Feeding more than four
This doubles, but use two pans. Crowd sixteen thighs into one dish and they steam each other and nothing browns. Two pans on two racks, swapped halfway through, is the answer when the table is full.
What is in the jar
It's Greek to Me is our USDA Certified Organic Greek blend, made in small batches by our family. No MSG, no fillers and no anti-caking agents. It comes in a 4 oz resealable pouch that lies flat in the cupboard and opens one-handed, which is worth something when the other hand has raw chicken on it, and in a 2 oz glass jar if you would rather keep one by the stove.
The seasoning is gluten free and kosher, and this dish as written has no wheat in it either — just chicken, potatoes, lemon, oil, garlic, broth and herbs. Check your chicken broth and your feta labels if that matters in your house, since those are the two places wheat sometimes hides.
More to put beside it
For the rest of the Greek table, It's Greek to Me Salad is the one to make alongside this — it needs no oven and the feta gets dipped in the same blend. It's Greek to Me Tzatziki is worth stirring together while the pan roasts, because a spoonful of it on a hot potato is very good, and It's Greek to Me Feta Dip gives people something to do while the oven is busy. Greek White Bean Salad makes it stretch to six.
If you want the same blend built around a different dinner, Greek Gyros with Tzatziki is a butterflied leg of lamb carved into pitas — the one to make when you are feeding ten.
And if it is the chicken rather than the Greek you were after, Sunday Roast Chicken with The OG is the whole-bird version for a Sunday, and Crispy Smashed Potatoes is the potato on its own when something else is the main event.