By Terry Boyd, Blue Kitchen
Serves 4 (see Kitchen Notes)
4 good-sized, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried tarragon, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil (plus more, as needed)
4 small Yukon Gold potatoes, about 1 pound, peeled and cut into wedges (see Kitchen Notes)
1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried minced orange peel (see Kitchen Notes for substitutes)
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine [editor's note: substitute cooking wine]
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Trim excess fat from chicken thighs and season them on both sides with salt, pepper and half the tarragon. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large, lidded, oven-safe sauté pan or skillet over medium-high flame. Add chicken skin side down and cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, turn chicken and brown on other side for 3 minutes. Transfer chicken to a plate.
3. You’ll probably have a fair amount of oil in the pan at this point. Don’t drain it, though. Add potato wedges and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, turning occasionally. Add Brussels sprouts to pan and toss to coat with oil. You may need to drizzle in some more oil – the potatoes and sprouts like to soak it up. Cook for another 5 minutes, turning potatoes and sprouts occasionally. The pan will be quite crowded, but you want to make sure the potato wedges brown and that, as much as possible, the cut sides of the sprouts spend some time face down in the pan. Some will brown, some won’t. No biggie.
4. When most of potatoes have a bit of color, create a hole in the center of the pan and drizzle in a little more oil, if needed. Add onion and cook, stirring, until it begins to soften, 3 minutes or so. Gently toss to combine everything and make another hole in the center. Add garlic, orange peel and remaining tarragon and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add broth and wine and stir everything together, scraping up any browned bits.
5. Season mixture with salt and pepper. Nestle chicken thighs into the sprouts and potatoes and add any accumulated juices from the plate. Cover pan and transfer to oven. Braise until potatoes are cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes.
Transfer chicken to a plate. Taste sprouts and potatoes mixture and adjust seasonings. Divide among 4 shallow bowls and top each with a chicken thigh. Serve.
Kitchen Notes
More chicken? With the heartiness of the Brussels sprouts and potatoes, one chicken thigh should be plenty per serving. If you’d like a meatier version, add 4 drumsticks and cook as described above. At the end, each bowl gets two pieces of chicken.
No small potatoes? Just use 1 pound of potatoes, whatever their size, and cut into good-sized chunks. You can also use fingerling potatoes, unpeeled and sliced in half lengthwise, or baby Yukons, unpeeled and quartered. Just be sure to scrub the skins under running water if you’re not peeling the potatoes.
No dried minced orange peel? We really like this dried seasoning for adding some citrusy brightness to dishes. We find ours at The Spice House. You can substitute twice or three times the amount of fresh orange zest. Another option is to peel a large orange into long, broad strips, using a vegetable peeler. Try to get as little of the bitter white pith as possible, getting mostly the orange outer skin. Flex the strips to release the oils in the skin and add them to the pan when you’ve added the broth and wine. Push them down into the liquid with a wooden spoon. When the dish is done, discard the strips of orange peel.
