This preserved lemon chicken is a twist on the classic lemon pepper chicken . . .
Continuing on my theme of finding the perfect lemon pepper chicken, this preserved lemon chicken, made with fresh and preserved lemons, saffron, thyme, and garlic, is a top contender. The recipe is based on one from the Ottolenghi Simple cookbook. It has become one of my favorites. It’s so simple to prepare – it doesn’t need to marinate, so it can be done start to finish in a little over an hour (depending on the size of your chicken, of course).
The skin and sauce from this chicken is insanely good. The preserved lemon adds a lemon flavor that isn’t pure tartness — although you still have the fresh lemon to add tartness. The saffron subtly complements the preserved lemon. To further bolster the flavor (and because I couldn’t bear to let the drippings go to waste, I like to collect the drippings, cook them down a bit, and use them as a sauce for the chicken. You could alternatively roast the chicken on top of some vegetables and capture the drippings that way. I just prefer to put them back on the chicken.
Sauce is great for kids (adding an activity can increase a kid’s interest in food — wait if we eat chicken, we get to dip our chicken in SAUCE???!!!)
Dressing up the dish
If you have company coming over, or if you just prefer to do things in a cast iron skillet (I’ve really come around on the simplicity of cooking chickens this way), you can cook this chicken in a cast iron skillet. It makes the presentation a bit more exciting.
Also, every time you cook food in a cast iron skillet, some of the iron migrates into your food. So for those of us who have historically low iron levels, or who may be concerned about the kids’ iron levels, this is a great reason to use the cast iron skillet whenever possible.
My instructions below contemplate using a glass or porcelain pan that you line with parchment paper. This is the easiest thing to clean up, but the skillet is a close second. The only difference in cooking is that you plop the chicken into a pre-oiled skillet (I do not preheat it) instead of a baking dish, and you get to skip the step about cutting the parchment paper.
The deal with the butter
This recipe calls for 4 tablespoons of butter. The original called for 5 tablespoons. It’s a lot of butter, either way. There’s no getting around that. Given I’ve reduced the amount of butter already, I don’t think reducing the amount of butter in the recipe further is a good idea. It also doesn’t work to substitute it with increased olive oil. The reason for this is that the butter adheres better to the chicken, which means you get more of the delicious preserved lemon-thyme crust. See below.
So leave the butter be. A lot of it drips down during cooking anyway, so if you don’t want to eat all that butter, you can avoid most of it by not saucing up your chicken (or at least siphoning off most of the fat first). Or you can embrace the butter and drizzle it everywhere (despite my better judgment, it’s hard not to).
Now, on to the recipe!
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Preserved Lemon Chicken with Saffron & Thyme
This is another lemon chicken recipe, this time with a twist as it calls for preserved lemons, saffron, and thyme. Super easy and absolutely delicious! It only requires about 15 minutes of active time to prepare — the rest is cooking time.
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Yield: 1 chicken 1x
Ingredients
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 pinch of saffron
3 tbsp thyme leaves and tender stems
5 garlic cloves
1 preserved lemon, peel only
1 fresh lemon (zest + juice)
1/2 tsp salt
pepper
1 chicken (ideally around 4 lbs)
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Prep the dressing for the chicken.
Melt the butter in the microwave. As soon as it is finished melting, mix the pinch of saffron into the warm butter. Set aside to cool a bit while you work on prepping the other ingredients for the dressing.
Zest the lemon.
In a blender (an immersion blender works best here, but a normal blender will also work if it is on the smaller side), combine the thyme, preserved lemon skin, lemon zest, garlic, juice from 1/2 of the lemon, 1/2 tsp of salt, several grinds of pepper, and finally the saffron butter mixture.
Blend until most of the large chunks are gone, but stop before the mixture is totally smooth. You want a bit of texture. (See picture above.)
3. Prep the chicken.
Find a relatively small baking dish that is jut big enough to fit the chicken. Line it with parchment paper. Plop in the chicken. Then trim around the edges of the parchment paper so you don’t have loads of parchment paper sticking up ready to burn.
Take the dressing and place some under the skin of the chicken. I use gloves for this, because touching raw chicken is just not something I enjoy.
Then use the remainder of the dressing to coat the remainder of the chicken. Get it on nice and thick, like a mud facemask. Mmm.
4. Roast the chicken at 400F for about 1 hour.
I usually bake chickens using the convection setting. This will affect the cooking time (about 60 minutes for a 4lb chicken with convection; 70 minutes without). Check on the chicken after about 30 minutes and baste it with some of the butter that will have dripped off in the bottom of the dish.
The chicken is done when the breast reaches 155F. Let it rest for about 10 minutes (the chicken will come up to 165F during this resting period and the juices will redistribute so you don’t lose moisture when you cut into it).
5. After removing the chicken from the dish, pour off the drippings into a saucepan and cook them down a bit.
Give them a try to see how they taste. If you want them to be more lemony and tart, you can add the juice of the remaining 1/2 lemon to the drippings while they cook down. I usually let them boil down for a couple of minutes. I use the reduced drippings as a sauce for the sliced chicken.
6. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 15 min
- Cook Time: 60 min
- Method: Bake
