Everyone should have a few killer recipes that never fail as those dishes mom would make over and over again but still had everyone running to the dinner table even if the meal was on its 28th year of syndication. Mom knew how to play it and slay it in the kitchen!

These slow-roasted chicken thighs are just that type of dream-about-in-your-sleep dish that will become your secret weapon during meal time.

Here’s a bonus, this dish has a special treat for garlic lovers. The garlic cloves (roasted and soaked in chicken fat) squeeze out of their little casings just like butter, ready to be spread onto a warm piece of bread or mixed in with mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower. Besides those tasty little tidbits, there’s also golden crispy chicken skin and caramelized lemons- score!

Ingredients

  • 8 Chicken thighs
  • 2 lemons
  • 1 Head of garlic
  • A few sprigs of thyme
  • Olive oil (enough to coat chicken, garlic, and lemons)
  • Salt & pepper
  • 1/2 Bottle of dry white wine

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
  2. Place fresh chicken thighs into a large bowl.
  3. Quarter the lemons and then gently squeeze over the chicken. Add the squeezed lemon chunks to the bowl.
  4. Open up the garlic, exposing the individual cloves. But, don’t expose them too much. Leave the skins on; you wouldn’t want to embarrass them. 😉
  5. Simply pull down on the thyme stalks to set the leaves free. Don’t fret if a few stems get into the bowl, nobody’s perfect!
  6. Add a few cranks of pepper and sprinkle some salt.
  7. Now drizzle the olive oil generously over everything.
  8. Mixing time! Don’t be afraid to get in there with your hands to make sure everything is nice and coated.
  9. Once the chicken is coated with all of that lemon and garlicky goodness, put everything into a roasting pan.
  10. Make sure everything has a little bit of space and isn’t too overcrowded in the pan.
  11. Pour the white wine over those merging flavors of chicken, lemon, and garlic and tightly cover.
  12. Pop into the oven and set a timer for about an hour and 15 minutes.
  13. After 1.5 hours, peal back the cover and baste. Recover and set for another hour.

  1. Once that timer goes off, jack up the heat to 400 degrees and uncover.
  2. Occasionally, stir those thighs, making sure the skin gets a nice little bath of wine and oil. NOTE: You can drain about half the juice and add a little more wine in a small saucepan if you want to make a thicker sauce.
  3. After about 45 minutes, turn on the broiler for about a minute to make sure everything gets a deep tan.

Any type of starch will do. But, we decided, since we were going so big with the chicken fat and all we would go for another showstopper!  We made mashed potatoes with cream cheese whipped in – why not? Hell, while we were at it we popped a can of crescent rolls into the oven too. Come summertime, a nice endive and fennel salad might work.

Nah… We’re still going for the Phili-mashed potatoes! 😉

Cheers,

The Haute Life