This recipe is not meant to be a prescriptive list of ingredients, but more loosely about the technique itself. Use bone-in, dark meat for this recipe and it should result in tender chicken that readily falls off the bone. Not recommended for boneless chicken or chicken breast. The vegetables make it a great one-pot meal that is especially satisfying during the winter.
Cook time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Preparation steps:
- Preheat the oven to 375° F
- Place a dutch oven or heavy pot with an ovenproof lid into the oven while it preheats
- Chop the kale
- If using a mixture of root vegetables, dice/slice everything except the potatoes
- Mix the thyme, sage, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, 1 teaspoon of salt and
Notes: Don’t dice the potatoes ahead of time–they’ll oxidize and turn brown while waiting to go into the pot
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- ½ tsp thyme
- ½ tsp sage
- ½ tsp rosemary
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- ½ tsp ground black pepper
- Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- 3-4 medium waxy potatoes, roughly diced
- 1 bunch kale, chopped
- Kosher salt and fresh black pepper, to taste
Substitutions & Remixes
This recipe is endlessly remixable:
- Swap out the kale for cabbage or mushrooms
- Use a mixture of root vegetables, like parsnips, carrots, celeriac, rutabaga, etc.
- Play around with the herb and spice mixture
- Replace some or all of the thighs with drumsticks or use hindquarters
Pair It With
- A hearty appetite
- Place the chicken thighs skin side up on a cutting board. When the chicken was butchered, the thigh would have been cut from the body, and the drumstick cut from the thigh. Both of these cuts severed the skin, leaving an opening. Find one of these openings, slide a finger under the skin and gently peel it back, exposing the meat underneath. This might required sliding your finger around to free the skin from the meat.
- Season the meat under the skin with the blended herbs and spices.
- Fold the skin back over the meat and season the top of the skin. Rub the seasoning into the skin to ensure it stays in place.
- Turn the thighs over and use the remainder of the seasoning on bottom of the thigh.
- Pull the dutch oven out and add about two teaspoons of olive oil, swirling it around to coat the bottom.
- Place the chicken thighs skin side down into the dutch oven and return to the oven.
- Cover and cook for 20 minutes.
- Dice the potatoes and lightly season with a pitch of salt.
- After 20 minutes, remove the dutch oven, pile all of the chicken thighs to one side, then dump in the potatoes. Shuffle things around so that the potatoes cover the bottom of the dutch oven and the chicken is resting on top of the potatoes, skin side up.
- Cover and return to the oven for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, remove from the oven and add the kale.
- Using tongs, jostle the potatoes a bit so that some of the kale falls down between the potato pieces. The kale doesn’t need to touch the bottom, but shouldn’t cover the chicken.
- Return to the oven and cook uncovered for another 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, without opening the oven door, turn on the broiler.
- Depending on how close the dutch oven is to the broiler element, how hot your broiler gets and the condition of the chicken skin, this next step could happen within a minute or two, or could take up to ten minutes, so be vigilant.
- We’re using the broiler at this stage to crisp the chicken skin. Taste will vary on how crispy it should be, so check it every minute or so until the skin gets the color and texture you desire. Or, if you don’t plan to eat the skin, you can skip this step entirely.
- Once cooked, pick out a potato and taste for seasoning. Add salt and pepper if needed.
Eat!