Braised Spatchcock Chicken
with potatoes and string beans
Hi everyone!
It has been a delicious week, even more so than usual. We had a ton of people over on Monday, my girls came to the office with us on Tuesday, and I’ve been working on so many new delicious recipes I know you’ll love.
On Monday, I spent all day in the kitchen cooking for Passover. By noon, I was forming matzo balls (made with homemade matzo meal) to drop into my slow-simmered bone broth. I decided to add a leek at the last minute, mostly because it was taking up too much room in my fridge but also because I knew it’d be delicious. (It was.) I also squeezed in a little lemon juice and grated fresh garlic into the broth.
I made a salad for our guests, too, with garlicky za’atar matzo on top. That’s the only way I like to eat matzo. Plain, it doesn’t taste good and gives me a stomach ache (I can’t be the only one?!). I served leftover Green Goddess Dressing as a dip—one of my favorite hacks, since it thickens in the fridge. We also had baba ganoush and matboucha ready to serve as apps, and I braised a marinated spatchcock chicken with potatoes for the main course (recipe below!). And my mom made mandel bread, as always. By 4 p.m., I was grazing on a board of veggies with my mom as everything finished cooking.
The chicken recipe is my very first paid subscriber recipe (!!!). It’s the juiciest, most tender, and best of all, the most hands-off chicken you’ll ever make. It marinates overnight in the fridge, then is braised with potatoes until it can be carved with a spoon. It takes a long time to cook—I put mine in at 10 a.m. and took it out around 6 p.m.—but once it’s in the oven you can just let it do its thing. It’s great for entertaining since you can keep it in the oven until you’re ready to serve, aka no more dinner parties where you’re stuck in the kitchen alone. And the string beans are a fast, easy way to add some greens to your plate.
Many of you know that I love a good one-pot chicken recipe, but I get asked all the time for a roast chicken recipe. This one is even better—a fuss-free chicken to keep in your back pocket the next time you need an impressive, mouthwatering meal.
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Here’s what else is on the menu for paid subscribers this week:
Microchopped Arugula Salad with the Perfect Grilled Ribeye OR Crispy Tofu
Bok Choy Salad with Marinated Tofu
Braised Spatchcock Chicken with Potatoes & String Beans
Can we take a second to admire how juicy this chicken looks? A regular roast chicken could never (and a picture wouldn’t have done it justice). You can use any leftovers to top salads like this one and this one, or if you have enough, use it to make chicken salad. It truly might be the best chicken I’ve ever made.
What You’ll Need
For a faster, weeknight-friendly version of this meal, this sheet pan chicken dinner is a winner (winner).
Ingredients
1 4-5 lb. chicken
1 head garlic, peeled (7 cloves for the marinade and 4 for the potatoes)
¼ cup avocado oil
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
3 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
Juice of 2 lemons
6 Russet potatoes
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4-8 cups vegetable broth (you’ll need enough to cover the chicken in the pot, so how much you’ll need depends on what size your pot is)
For the green beans
1 - 12 oz. bag green beans
⅓ cup sliced almonds
Juice of 1 lemon
1 garlic clove, grated
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
Black pepper
Directions
THE NIGHT BEFORE, prepare the chicken (in all caps so you don’t miss it). Remove the giblets from the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Flip the chicken to be breast-side down.
Using sharp kitchen shears, cut next to the spine, from the top to the tail. Repeat on the other side of the spine. You’ll be cutting through the smaller rib bones, so it shouldn’t be too difficult with the right scissors. Save the spine to make homemade stock.
Flip the chicken back over to be breast-side up and press down on the breast bone to flatten the chicken. You’ll hear a crack once the bone is broken. The hard part is over!
In a small bowl, whisk together 7 grated garlic cloves, avocado oil, mustard, ginger, soy sauce, honey, sweet paprika, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and lemon juice. Pro-tip: Oil your teaspoon so the honey slides right off!
Place the chicken in a large plastic bag (or even a glass container if it’s big enough) and rub the marinade over the chicken. Marinate in the fridge overnight.
The next morning, preheat the oven to 400°F.
Peel the potatoes and cut into 2” pieces. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes with 4 grated garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.
Place the marinated chicken in the bottom of a large Dutch oven and cover with the potatoes. Pour the vegetable broth into the pot until it mostly covers the chicken.
Crumple a sheet of parchment paper and use it to tightly cover the chicken and potatoes, then cover the pot with the lid.
Bake for 30 minutes, then lower the heat to 250°F. Cook for at least 3 hours, up to 6 hours, at the lower temperature.
When there are 15 minutes left on your chicken timer, start to make the beans by setting a large pot of water to boil over high heat.
Trim the beans to remove the pointy ends and add the beans to the boiling water. Cook for 1½ minutes, then drain and transfer directly to a plate.
At the same time, heat a small frying pan over medium heat and add the almonds. Cook for 3-5 minutes, tossing occasionally, until golden and nutty.
Whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt, and a few turns of black pepper in a small bowl.
Pour the dressing over the green beans and mix. Top with almonds just before serving.
Remove the chicken from the oven. If you’d like, you can remove the chicken from the pot and carve, but I just spooned out the pieces with a large spoon. The chicken should be fall-off-the-bone tender. Serve hot with the potatoes and beans.
So many of the spices in the marinade are in my kitchen staples list, so it’s likely you already have most of them. You can swap the avocado oil for any other neutral oil if you’re running low.
If you don’t have fresh ginger, you can use 2 teaspoons powdered ginger instead.
For the string beans, feel free to leave out the almonds or swap them for pumpkin or sunflower seeds if you have an allergy. You can also include a drizzle of tahina if you want, but they’re just as good without.
Love you too Melissa! Was very excited to try Braised Spatchcocked Chicken. Even though I knew in my heart of hearts that chicken cooked for six hours is an insane idea. But I wanted so badly for your Substack to succeed. So I followed recipe exactly. The dish was awful. Enough said. Sorry. Xo (PS I will give you props for your writing and the format; the layout, clarity, font choices of recipe are excellent.)