At a glance
4 servings with the potatoes underneath
EasyOne pan, no technique to learn first.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Total
- 55 min
- Serves
- 4
The compound butter under the skin is a restaurant move and it takes ninety seconds. Everything else about this is a traybake, which is to say the oven does it and you do not.
The reason to bother with the pocket is temperature. Anything sugary — honey, gochujang, miso, most marinades — sitting on the surface of chicken at 220C is going to be black before the thigh is cooked. Tucked underneath, the same mixture is protected by the skin, melts into the meat as the fat renders, and seasons from the inside.
What the skin is for
Left dry and salted, chicken skin at high heat renders its own fat and crisps. That fat drips onto the potatoes below, which is the actual argument for putting them in the same tray: they fry in schmaltz rather than roasting in oil.
Which is also why nothing goes on top of the skin except salt. Not oil, not more butter, not the marinade.
The potato layer
Halve them and lay them cut-side down. They want contact with hot metal for the same reason the broccoli did — a flat face browns, a curve does not. Onion wedges go in among them to sweeten and half-collapse.
Anything with more water than a potato will ruin the tray. Courgettes, peppers, and tomatoes all belong in a different recipe.
Knowing when it is done
Seventy-five degrees at the thickest part, next to the bone but not touching it. Thighs are forgiving — five degrees over will not hurt them — but the potatoes underneath are the real clock, and if they are not tender the chicken has not been in long enough.
Ingredients
For the butter
For the tray
Method
5 steps
Mash the butter
Mix the butter, gochujang, honey, garlic, and ginger to a smooth paste with a fork. It should be spreadable, not runny.
Get it under the skin
Slide a finger between skin and flesh on each thigh to make a pocket, and push a teaspoon of the butter in. Rub whatever is left over the skin. This is the whole recipe: butter under the skin bastes the meat, butter on the skin burns.
Build the tray
Heat the oven to 220C. Toss the potatoes and onion with the oil and salt on the sheet pan, spread them out, and sit the thighs on top, skin up. Salt the skin again.
Roast without turning
Forty minutes. The fat renders down into the potatoes, the skin goes dark and lacquered, and the thighs should read 75C at the bone. If the skin is not there yet, two minutes under the grill will finish it.
Rest, then scatter
Five minutes on the tray so the juices settle, then spring onions and sesame over everything. Spoon the pan fat over the potatoes before you serve.
Cook's notes
- Gochujang varies a lot in heat between brands. Taste yours before you commit two tablespoons.
- Thighs, not breasts. Breasts are dry by the time the potatoes are done and there is no version of this that fixes that.
- A crowded tray steams. If the potatoes are touching everywhere, use two pans.
- You will need
- A large rimmed sheet pan
- Keeps
- Three days. The cold chicken, shredded into rice, is the second dinner this recipe is really for.
