Key Takeaways
- Cooking the chicken with the skin on keeps it very moist and adds a lot of flavor.
- Infuse the olive oil used for cooking the chicken with garlic and herbs to add even more flavor.
- Bake the chicken in the oven, which is easy and hands off.
Trying to choose my favorite recipe from Ina Garten is a little like choosing my favorite child… impossible. That said, if I had to choose one recipe I couldn’t live without, it would be the Lemon Chicken Breasts from Ina’s bestselling “Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That?” This cookbook debuted in 2010, and I’ve been making this chicken ever since.
A common theme with all of Ina’s recipes is their ease. Her recipes are simple and straight to the point and huge on flavor. She knows how to make something taste absolutely amazing in shockingly easy ways.
Case in point, these chicken breasts. While normally this part of the chicken is one of my least favorite sources of protein—dry, flavorless, and easy to overcook—Ina’s genius method for cooking them has completely changed the game for me.
Simply Recipes / Ina Garten
2 Ways Ina Adds Flavor to This Chicken
The first, and arguably the most crucial step, is to source boneless chicken breast that still has the skin on. This is a fairly uncommon cut of chicken to find at the grocery store, and you may need to ask your butcher to prepare the chicken in this manner, or take matters into your own hands and remove the bone from a split chicken breast. Cooking the chicken with the skin on keeps it impossibly moist, and adds a lot of flavor.
Next up is Ina’s technique for adding flavor. She warms olive oil on the stove and adds aromatics to it off the heat. Add about nine cloves (yes, nine!) of minced garlic—the olive oil is warm enough to tame the raw garlic flavor, which transforms it into a gently infused garlic oil. Then lemon juice and zest, dried oregano, fresh thyme, salt, and white wine are added to the party for more flavor.
This mixture is poured into a baking pan, and the chicken breasts are placed on top. The chicken is seasoned with salt and pepper and brushed with a little of the oil before baking.
Why Ina’s Method Works
While the chicken bakes in a 400˚F oven, the breasts are mostly submerged in the flavorful oil. The chicken skin is above the oil, which allows it to brown and get nice and crispy. The tender oil-braised chicken combined with the golden brown and delicious skin you get on a roasted bird—the best of both worlds.
In about 45 minutes from start to finish, you can enjoy a restaurant-worthy chicken dish at home with very little mess to deal with.
I could probably eat it every day, and I’ve served it for almost every occasion; fancy parties I’ve been hired to cater, laid-back family dinners, as a make-ahead meal for new parents, and everything in between. And though I’ve rarely had leftovers, they do make for an amazing chicken salad!
Simply Recipes / Molly Adams
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