After a long day of work, sometimes cooking dinner is the last thing you want to do; thankfully, this one-pan oven meal gives you the delicious flavor you crave with very little hassle. It doesn’t require any fancy knife skills or a lot of culinary prowess, so it’s a good choice for the cook who loves to make great-tasting food without having to follow complex recipes. This dish is simple and rustic, a warm and comforting meal that’s packed with the rich, bold flavors of roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and tart lemon.
This week’s recipe: Roasted Lemon Chicken and Sausages with Rosemary and Garlic
Why we like it:
This classic dish is one every home chef should have in their repertoire. It is chock-full of ingredients that are good for your health and easy to prepare.
The recipe calls for garlic, which is a great source of vitamins and minerals, lemons, a fruit high in Vitamin C, and fresh rosemary, a nutritious and fragrant perennial herb.
What you need:
3-4 chicken leg quarters (you can substitute breasts if you prefer)
1 Tbsp whole-grain mustard
5 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, cut into 8 segments
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
6-8 sausages
1 head of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
1 lemon, cut into 4 segments
A few sprigs of rosemary, plus 1 Tbsp chopped
800g new potatoes, chopped
The first step is to prepare your lemon, mustard, and oil mixture so that you can marinate your chicken, either for a few hours before you begin cooking or just while you’re preparing the rest of the dish.
Start by chopping your onion into 8 segments and setting them aside while you make the dressing.
Now you’ll want to zest your lemon, which can be done with a cheese grater if you don’t own a lemon zester.
Next, chop the same lemon in half and squeeze the juice into a small bowl. You can remove the seeds from the juice with a fork.
Now measure out your olive oil.
As well as your whole-grain mustard.
Add the lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, and lemon zest together in a bowl and mix well with a whisk or fork. Feel free to add some salt and pepper, to taste.
Pour the mixture over the chicken and make sure the poultry is evenly coated with the dressing.
The easiest way to completely coat the chicken in the dressing is to get a little dirty and mix it all up with your hands. If you’re squeamish about touching raw poultry, spread the chicken in the baking pan you’ll be cooking the dish in later, then simply push and turn the legs around in the dressing with some tongs until they are nicely coated.
Add the chopped onion to the chicken and dressing and leave it to marinate for an hour or two, or just while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, depending on how much time you’ve got. If you are cooking the dish right away, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Now you can move on to assembling the rest of your ingredients. Take your second lemon and cut it into four segments.
For this dish, you won’t need to dice or mince any garlic. Simply break the head of garlic open with your hands and peel the outer layers away from the individual cloves.
The cloves of garlic can be roasted with the peels still on. While garlic has quite a pungent, sharp taste when it’s raw, it softens both in texture and flavor when cooked, so it will become creamy and smooth once it’s fully cooked.
Roughly chop approximately 1 tablespoon of rosemary, and set aside several more sprigs to go into the dish whole. If you cannot find fresh rosemary, you can substitute dried rosemary, but it is not nearly as powerful in flavor, so you will need to double or triple the amount used.
Finally, chop your potatoes into small chunks.
Combine the chicken, onion, and dressing mixture with the lemon segments, garlic cloves, potatoes, and chopped rosemary and mix well to make sure everything is coated in the dressing.
Add the sausages to the pan as well, placing them on top of the other ingredients so they will brown nicely. Add a few full sprigs of rosemary on the top, and your dish is ready to start roasting! Place the pan in the oven on a middle rack.
You’ll want to turn the chicken legs a few times throughout the roasting time in order to get a beautiful, golden-brown skin. Move the potatoes and sausages around the pan at the same time so they can get that crispy, roasted finish. The cooking time is approximately 1 hour and 15-20 minutes, or until all the ingredients are cooked, golden, and sizzling a little. Once it’s finished, remove the pan from the oven, dish up this delectable dinner, and bon appétit!
