Description
Delicious, crispy skillet chicken thighs with a Mediterranean flair
Ingredients
- 6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, thawed if previously frozen
- Kosher salt and black pepper
- 1 tsp paprika
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 3/4 C rough chopped green olives
- 1 shallot, thinly sliced
- 1 lemon, cut in half, with half of it sliced
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 475°F (246°C).
- Salt and pepper the chicken thighs generously on both sides, also seasoning them with the paprika.
- Put a cast iron (or other heavy-bottomed) skillet on the stove and heat over high heat.
- Add the oil to the pan and heat it until it is almost smoking, ~375°F (191°C). (Use an IR thermometer to check the pan temp.)
- Place the thighs, skin-side-down, in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then reduce heat to medium.
- Continue to cook the chicken for about 8-10 minutes, until the skin is well browned and is becoming crisp and well-rendered. Rotate them in the pan from time to time to make sure the brown evenly on the skin side. Do not flip.
- Kill the heat. Scatter the olives, shallots, lemon slices, and the thyme, stripped from its stems, over the chicken in the skillet.
- Insert a needle probe into the centermost piece of chicken. Don’t let the probe touch the bone, but make sure it’s as close to the center of the meat as possible. Connect the probe to a ChefAlarm and set the high-temp alarm to 165°F (74°C).
- Put the skillet of chicken in the oven and monitor the cook from the outside with your ChefAlarm.
- When the high-temp alarm sounds, after about 10–15 minutes, open the oven and flip all the chicken pieces so that they are skin-side up. Squeeze the remaining half of the lemon into the cracks between the chicken.
- Continue to cook the skillet of chicken in the oven. Reset the high-temp alarm to 180°F (82°C).
- When the high-temp alarm sounds, about 5–7 minutes later, verify the doneness with your Thermapen ONE.
- Carefully remove the skillet from the oven and serve the chicken, spooning the olives and shallots from the pan onto the individual portions.
