You can usually find chicken thighs and Brussels sprouts lurking in my fridge and even though our deal is that the person who cooks, doesn’t do the dishes, the easy clean-up that you get from sheet pan dinners is always appreciated. Serves 4:
Sheet-Pan Lemon Chicken Thighs With Brussels Sprouts
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter or ghee, at room temperature
- 2 lemons, zested (for about 2 tablespoons), 1 cut into very thin rounds and 1 halved, seeds removed
- ½ cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
- Salt and pepper
- 3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds)
- 1 ½ pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
- 1 small red onion, peeled, quartered and cut into 1″ wedges
- ½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
- ¼ cup grated Parmesan
Heat the oven to 450°, set one oven rack 6″ from the broiler and place another rack in the lower third of the oven.
In a large bowl, combine the butter, zest of both lemons, half the parsley and 1 teaspoon salt. Rub 1 teaspoon oil on a sheet pan. Pat the chicken dry, then transfer to the sheet pan and season well with salt and pepper. Reserve about 1 teaspoon of the compound butter in the bowl, then rub the rest all over the chicken and under the skin by lifting it up, pushing a tiny amount of compound butter underneath, then pressing on top. Arrange the chicken pieces skin-side up.
Add the Brussels sprouts, onion wedges, lemon rounds, red-pepper flakes and the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil to the bowl with the compound butter; toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Arrange vegetable mixture around the chicken, placing some lemon rounds on top of the vegetables.
Roast on the lower rack, 30 to 35 minutes, stirring the vegetables halfway through, until the chicken is crispy, the chicken juices run clear when the meat is pierced with a fork, and the brussels sprouts are browned and crunchy. If the chicken skin is not as crispy as you’d like, transfer the vegetables to a serving platter, then place the chicken under the broiler for 1 to 3 minutes. Transfer the chicken to the serving platter.
Squeeze one of the lemon halves over the chicken and vegetables and cut the remaining lemon half into quarters. Garnish the chicken and vegetables with the cheese and the remaining parsley, serve with the lemon wedges and enjoy!
My verdict:
Our broiler is underneath the oven, so the skin on the chicken thighs might not have been as crispy as if I had a broiler in the top of the oven, but this ended up being a nice no-fuss dinner. I divided the recipe in half to serve 2 so only used the lower rack in the oven.
Because potatoes cooked in chicken drippings are always good, I added some cut up Yukon gold potatoes to the mix. My brother is a big fan of ghee and is trying to convert me so I used that, if you use butter it’s going to need to be very soft to make the compound butter. More on compound butter coming up-I think it’s going to be one of those dinner saving ingredients for 2021.
