It doesn’t get much simpler than this, but you can dress up this recipe in a variety of ways. The result is always delicious and satisfying: moist meat, crackling skin, finished with the sauce of your choice.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
2. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and season it with salt and pepper.
3. Heat oil in a heavy, ovenproof 12″ skillet over high heat until it shimmers. Place the chicken into the skillet, skin side down, and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Reduce the heat to medium-high. Continue cooking with the skin down, moving the pieces around as needed to ensure even cooking, until the fat is rendered and the skin is golden brown — about 12 minutes.
5. Move the skillet into the oven and cook for about 13 minutes more.
6. Flip the pieces over and continue cooking about 5 minutes longer, until the skin is crisp and the meat is cooked through (165 degrees).
7. Transfer the chicken pieces to a plate. Cover with foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
8. Pour off the fat from the skillet, and deglaze the pan for sauce (see Notes).

Notes

• This recipe is adapted from Bon Appétit
• The tasty pan drippings offer lots of possibilities for finishing this dish in style.
  • My favorite thing to do is to deglaze the pan with a mustard vinaigrette (whole-grain mustard, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper), which I then use it to dress some sort of sturdy greens (arugula is good).
  • A pan sauce made by deglazing with white wine, mustard, and (heavy) cream is also amazingly delicious.
  • Or try deglazing with white wine, lemon juice, and tarragon.
  • I have also tried wilting baby kale in the roasting pan and mixing it with red onion, roasted butternut squash, and chopped hazelnuts to make a side dish. (I roasted the squash chunks at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, which reduced it down to almost a candy — very sweet and rich and concentrated in flavor.) Yum!
  • Let me know what you try!