Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

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Or, a perfect Sunday chicken.

Growing up, we often had roasted lemon-oregano chicken with potatoes on Sundays. (Even then, I liked dark meat more, and that was always reserved for me because I was spoiled.)  Although that’s still (and will probably always be) my favorite roast chicken, this one is pretty damn good.  The nice thing about this recipe is that the chicken is cut up and pan-fried, so the time it needs to roast in the oven is minimal. There is some prep involved, in terms of the brining and the roasting of the garlic, but most of that is inactive and easy-peasy.

I think my husband must have asked me like 3 times if I was really using 40 cloves of garlic in one dish. He was under the impression both that this would be pungent, and that it was expensive or wasteful. He missed the memo about garlic heads being 10 cents a head, I guess.

Roasted garlic isn’t pungent in the least bit. It’s sweet and mellow and delicious. It adds such a great depth to this chicken and the pan sauce.

I took Cook’s Illustrated’s suggestion to spread the roasted garlic on some crusty bread–a great suggestion. Of course, I couldn’t let the pan sauce be so lonely on the plate, so we also had mashed redskin potatoes. Double carb nights in this household are rare, so this was a nice treat. I’ll pretend we didn’t eat half the loaf of bread with hunks of feta before dinner even was even started.

This is a classic dish and there are plenty of recipes for it, but most are quite similar. I debated between this one and Ina Garten’s but settled here because I didn’t have cognac and I liked the herbs in this recipe better, too. It definitely didn’t disappoint!

  

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

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11 thoughts on “Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

  1. I had heads of garlic in my lamb neck roast last night. Another garlic recipe in the same week???Why the hell not! I like the idea of cutting the chicken up in pieces….as you’ve said, time can not be waisted here!!

  2. i love roasted garlic, and just like you say, it isnt as pungent as one would think – admittedly i would probably go a little easy on it, because it usually is the men in our lives lurking over our shoulder when we’re in the kitchen that have reservations about what we’re doing!

  3. This looks good. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time and have been thinking about Ina’s recipe. Thanks for the hint on using the leftover garlic, that sounds so yummy!

  4. Like Ivy, I had seen this but was reluctant to try it! Thanks for passing it on and giving a great explanation Elly…it looks so good!

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