Nicks’s immense love for making food comes from his even bigger love for people.
In fact, his best recipes — infused with the MOST love — happen by chance when he’s cooking for a specific person or group. He asks thoughtful questions when they’re least expecting it about their favorite foods, saving those nuggets of knowledge for the perfect moment to craft a comforting meal that reminds them of home.
This meal (or rather, this chicken, served with Nick’s Perfect White Rice) was made specially for our dear friend Nina, who spends her summers at her family’s home in a tiny town called Conca on the Amalfi Coast. Amalfi lemons are the biggest, most beautiful lemons we’ve ever seen, so he decided to make lemon the star flavor of this dish. And trust me, it’s infused deeply into every. single. morsel!
These photos are from a rendition made without whole slices of lemon thrown into the mix, but we’ve collectively decided that it tastes best when a few are infused in there, peel and all. Really gets the lemon essential oil deep into the meat and adds a fresh, bright note to an otherwise hearty dish. The final recipe below takes this into account and mentions the lemon slices 🙂 Let’s get into it!
Nick’s Amalfi Coast Lemon Rosemary Chicken
PREP TIME
10 minCOOK TIME
30 minTOTAL TIME
40 minSERVES
2Ingredients
- 4-5 chicken thighs (with skin and bones)
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 8-10 lemons (NOTE: use 1 for slicing)
- Handful of fresh oregano
- Handful of fresh rosemary
- 2 tbsp butter
- Salt & pepper
- Olive oil for initial sear
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 350F degrees.
- Marinate your chicken thighs in lemon juice (roughly 3-5 lemons, enough to evenly coat all the chicken); cover and let sit for 20 minutes. We use a glass Tupperware for this step.
- Remove the chicken from the marinade and season both sides with salt only.
- In an oven-safe glass pyrex measuring cup or dish, combine the fresh herbs, butter, and cup of chicken broth. Muddle with a pestle or wooden spoon to really bring out the flavor and the oil of the herbs. Place this mixture in the oven for ~5 minutes to melt the butter and continue releasing flavor from the herbs.
- Heat a large pan with ~2 tbsp olive oil on medium high heat. Wait for the pan to heat up and place the chicken skin side down; sear each side for 3-4 minutes until you achieve a nice brownish color on both sides.
- Pour in your mixture of herbs, chicken broth, and butter from your glass pyrex. Add the juice of 4 lemons. Shake the pan gently to combine all flavors and make sure that the herbs are in the liquid, not just sitting on top. Leave this on the fire for 2-3 minutes so that everything combines.
- At this point you have the option of slicing a lemon and adding 2-4 slices (depending on how intense you want the lemon peel flavor) skin and everything, to the pan. This will really deepen the brightness of flavor and bring out some lemon essential oil. If you don’t want intensely lemon chicken, skip this step or just add a single slice.
- Make sure that your pan and cover are oven friendly. If you don’t have a proper cover, we found that covering with foil does the job, but a cover is preferred. Place the covered pan in the oven for 15 minutes.
- After 15 minutes, remove the cover and cook uncovered in the oven for another 10 minutes.
- For the final 2 minutes, turn the oven on BROIL and watch closely; allow the skin to crisp up to your liking.
TIP: Best served with white rice. Save the leftover juice from the pan to pour over your rice, you won’t regret it!
