Recipe: chicken with 40 cloves of garlic
Crazy about garlic? Then this is your new favorite recipe. Chicken thighs with forty cloves of garlic – and yet you won’t faint from the smell, because the garlic cooks in the oven until it’s soft and creamy. The recipe is by Nigella Lawson from her cookbook Kitchen, and it has been adapted slightly over time.
Chicken is simply that one ingredient that always works. Tender, juicy, and a perfect carrier of flavor – especially when you combine it with something like… let’s say… forty cloves of garlic. It’s comfort food in its purest form. Every kitchen has its own version of “the perfect chicken,” but this oven-baked version with soft, sweet garlic is one that will have your taste buds giving you a standing ovation. Plus: even with that mountain of garlic, you can remain perfectly sociable at the table. Win-win.
How to make garlic chicken
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Heat the oil in a Dutch oven. Brown the chicken on all sides. Don’t cook too much chicken at once in the pan, as it won’t brown properly.
Spread half of the garlic cloves over a large oven dish. Place the browned chicken pieces, skin-side down, in a single layer on top of the garlic, then spread the remaining cloves over them.
Cut the spring onion into small rings and sauté it in the oil left in the Dutch oven, along with a little thyme. Deglaze with the vermouth or wine, loosen the browned bits of chicken from the pan, and pour the whole lot over the chicken in the oven dish.
Season with salt and pepper, and tuck in a few more sprigs of thyme. If you like, you can drizzle some lemon juice over the chicken and squeeze the lemon pieces into the dish between the chicken pieces. Cover the oven dish, place it in the oven, and bake for about an hour and a half. Remove the lid during the final fifteen minutes.
More delicious chicken dishes
Because chicken is a culinary chameleon that we can never get enough of, we have a number of delicious chicken recipes for you. Because if anything is as true as a cow chicken, it’s that chicken effortlessly adapts to every flavor, every cuisine, and every moment of the day. Whether you grill it with Peruvian spices, slowly braise it in a jambalaya until buttery soft, or stir-fry it with cashews and crunchy vegetables, grill it for a BBQ chicken sandwich – chicken is never boring. The meat is mild on its own, making it perfect for letting flavors such as chili, garlic, lemon, or spice blends shine.
And let’s be honest: little beats the first bite of a well-seasoned chicken satay, crispy karaage, or sticky chicken wings. Chicken = comfort food at its most delicious.
Also read:
- Reheating chicken, yes or no?
- Garlic knots, super-quick garlic bread rolls
- Toum, Lebanese garlic sauce
