The easiest chicken supper

There are so many chicken dishes out there, but this one really is so easy.

If you get back from work and need to turn around a quick supper for lots of people then this is always a great option. Or, if you’ve got loads of people coming round, and you can’t be bothered to do anything fussy, then try this recipe.

My only recommendation is that you pre-plan enough to make sure that you’ve been to a real-life butchers, and got huge, juicy chicken legs…because if you use the ratty little thighs at Tesco’s, then it really won’t have the same impact. (Despite being enormous portions of meat, chicken legs like these shouldn’t cost much more than £1-£1.20 which is pretty darned good.)

Ingredients
1 chicken thigh per person
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary
½ lemon per person (plus one extra lemon for the sauce)
½ garlic clove per person
Crème fraiche
Some salt and olive oil

Put all the chicken legs in a roasting tray. Cut the lemons in half, and nestle them between the legs.

Next, cut the garlic bulbs in half horizontally, and squeeze them in the remaining gaps, then scatter the rosemary on top - still on the stalks.

Finally, drizzle some olive oil over the chicken, and massage a sprinkling of salt into the meat.

Put the roasting tray in an oven at 180C for 45 minutes.
Before taking the chicken out, check that the juices are running clear. If they aren’t, then pop the tray back in the oven for a little bit longer. The beauty of cooking chicken on the bone is that it’s far less likely to dry out quickly like chicken breasts do.

By the time that the chicken is done, the lemons will have gone delicious and soft, and the garlic will be nice and squishy, so your guests can squeeze it out of the cloves onto their chicken if they fancy.

If you want to make a jus, then put a couple of dollops of crème fraiche into the juices at the bottom of the roasting tray, and then stir in some lemon and ground pepper. It’s a light, summery sauce. I recommend serving with a summer salad and potatoes. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.