Roasted Chicken Thighs with Orange and Fennel
Serves 2
This is a sheet pan dinner. One pan and one bowl to clean-up! I’ve only made this recipe with bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. Chicken breasts might be too dry but you can try or you could try a pork lion.
Here is what you will need:
4 skin on bone in chicken thighs
1 orange
1 and ½ TBS olive oil
1 and ½ TBS honey
1 and ½ TBS stone ground Dijon mustard (or any stone ground mustard you like)
4 sprigs fresh thyme
½ bulb fennel and fennel fronds
½ pound small potatoes like red or fingerling
½ red onion
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed (optional)
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
Here is what you need to do:
Do your prep while you preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Yep it’s hot. Line a baking sheet with foil and slide in oven while it's heating.
Slice the orange in half, then slice one round from one orange half and two rounds from the other half.Now slice those rounds in half so you now have 6 orange half- moons, set them aside. Squeeze the juice from the remaining orange halves into a large glass bowl. Add the olive oil, honey , mustard and fennel seeds (if using) into the bowl. Strip the thyme from the stems and add to bowl. Season with some salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning as you like.
Slice the stalks off the top of the fennel and slice off about a half inch off the bottom of the fennel. Wash it off with water and if there are any really tough layers, peel them off but don’t peel off the main outer layer, you will have very little fennel left if you do that. If there are some light brown spots on the outer layer just use a vegetable peeler and shave them off. Slice the fennel in half, vertically. Remove the hard triangle looking core in each half by slicing it out with your knife.You may also have to trim up the top of your fennel if there are any stalk remnants left. The stalks are not edible but put them in water , like you would flowers, so you can use the fronds. You can google how to slice fennel and many videos will pop up.
Slice the onion the same width as you did your fennel. Cut the potatoes into bite size chunks, not too thick because they need to cook through.Add the potatoes, fennel and onions in the bowl and toss to coat.
Trim any excess skin from the chicken. If you leave skin under the thigh it will not get crispy but it will be rubbery.
Carefully remove the baking sheet from the oven. Using tongs remove the vegetables from the bowl and place on baking sheet in a single layer. Put the orange slices in the bowl and toss to coat, place the slices on top of the vegetables on the sheet.
Put the chicken in the bowl and toss to coat.Place the chicken, skin side up on top of the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper then pour any remaining orange/mustard mixture remaining in the bowl over the vegetables on the sheet.
Slide in into the oven, step back when you first open the door, it’s hot. Roast on the center rack for 30 minutes. Take a peek at 15 minutes, if the skin is getting too dark for your liking you can slide some foil on top but remove it for the last two minutes so the skin stays crispy.
Remove from oven and top with fennel fronds. Let’s Eat!!