Does anything taste more like summer time than lemons? The freshness and the acidity always remind me of warm weather. Now that our weather is in full-fledged summer mode (complete with 90º days, pop-up thunderstorms and lot and lots of sunshine), I’m craving fresh food. Bonus: this recipe requires no oven! Not going to lie, I skip right past recipes that require me to turn on the oven to heat up a house that I’m paying to keep cool. It’s basic logic.
Why thighs?
You could totally use chicken breasts with this recipe instead of chicken thighs. I will tell you though, I prefer thighs for 2 reasons:
- They are usually cheaper per pound. And free range thighs seem to be on sale at my grocery store more often.
- Thighs stay much juicier than boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And no one likes dry chicken.
Seriously though. I don’t even like chicken half of the time because it’s so dry. This chicken is anything but that. The combo of using chicken thighs + searing it on cast iron first to lock in the juices and then finishing the chicken simmering in the sauce = the juiciest. Good luck not licking your plate in front of your dinner guests.
I’m usually all for rustic (i.e. ugly but delish) food, but sometimes I like to get a little fancy. To replicate this garnish, slice a lemon, then cut halfway into the lemon round and fan it out. Look at you, being all fancy and eating with your eyes first.
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Our favorite way to tell if meat is cooked? Cut it in half? Well now your chicken looks like it went through a massacre. Just wing it and hope it’s cooked? Salmonella can’t be that bad, can it? Nope…we like to use our kitchen thermometer. According to foodsafety.gov, chicken should be cooked to 165º F. Insert the probe into the thickest part of the chicken, set the temperature alert to 165º F and leave it until it beeps at you that your chicken is done. Juiciness achieved. Fam wowed.
