Super F**king Easy Recipe: Mediterranean Chicken Your Friends Won’t Believe You Made
I’m a busy mom, but also a person who loves entertaining guests and showing off my culinary chops. Unfortunately, the busy mom usually overrides the desire to make some fancy stuff for guests. Which is why I am thrilled to have a few recipes in my arsenal that are quick, but also amazing looking and delicious. None of my guests would ever believe how easy this particular dish is to make — but that’s okay, because I’d never tell them anyway. I’d rather pretend I’ve been toiling for hours and it’s probably a recipe that could never be duplicated. I’m sneaky like that.
I promise you, the following recipe takes less than 10 minutes to prepare.
Ingredients:
8 -10 chicken thighs. I prefer skinless but you can get whatever you want.
8 oz (roughly) jars of each of the following:
Pitted Kalamata olives
Peperoncini peppers
Artichoke hearts
Sundried tomatoes
A large chunk of feta.
Okay, so I’m not great with measurements. I admit it. Go with it.
Put some olive oil in a pan and brown the chicken thighs on both sides. You only need to brown them, not cook them fully. You can skip this part if you want to make the recipe even easier, but I like browning meat.
Remove thighs from frying pan and place in a baking pan of your choice. I prefer glass – totally doesn’t matter, but it should be about nine inches by 13 inches. Take the olives, peperoncini peppers, sundried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts and spread them over and around the chicken. You don’t have to cut anything up. At all. Add some of the jar juice from each of those items – about three or four tablespoons of each. cover the whole concoction is extra virgin olive oil. Use a lot. Salt and pepper the beautiful mass of chicken and veggies and stick it in a 400 degree oven for one hour, uncovered. At around minute 45, remove the pan and crumble the feta over the whole dish. Stick it back in the oven for the remaining 15 minutes.
It sort of looks like this before you put the feta on it:
(photo: foodcomas)
When you take it out of the oven, there will be a ton of juice around the meat which makes the dish great over mashed potatoes, rice – or just served with a giant wedge of good, crusty bread.
When you serve it to your guests, you may feel compelled to tell them how easy it was. Don’t! Let them think you are a culinary genius. I promise you will feel like one after you try this meal you just made. It’s that good. And guess what? It works in a crockpot, too. You can literally throw all of this stuff into a crockpot before you go to work and return to deliciousness.
You’re welcome.
(photo: Everett Collection/ Shutterstock)
