Delicious chicken for very little effort, but not quite for the potatoes. A cautionary tale in avoiding efficiency drag when meal prepping.

Time: 4/5
It’s not the chicken, it’s the potatoes. Parboiling takes time.

Effort: 4/5
More steps always cost more effort, but that’s how you build character.

Win some, lose some

Every now and then I try to shake things up a bit, do things a little differently and see if I learn something new. This week, I decided to see if I can deviate from the same oven-roasted chicken and rice template that I keep coming back to again and again. 

One part of the experiment was to develop another low-effort chicken thigh recipe to add to my ever growing repertoire. I’m actually in the process of writing a chicken and rice cheat sheet to give out as a freebie for people who join the email newsletter. Existing newsletter friends need not worry, you’ll be the first to get it the moment it goes live.

(Not on the newsletter yet? Join up and get the cheat sheet in your inbox when it’s ready.)

Another part of the experiment was to see what would happen if I deviated from my usual routine of relying on the rice cooker for meal prepping my carbs. Food blogs make smashed potatoes look so good, but since the oven was going to be occupied by the chicken I wanted to see if I can make them in a skillet.

The results were mixed. The chicken turned out great, and I’ll tell you about that in the first section. The potatoes didn’t work quite the way I imagined it to, and I’ll tell you about that too later.

The Chicken

One of the ways I develop new recipes is by moving laterally. Off-the-shelf seasoning mixes like Old Bay are great shortcuts for getting big bold flavours without needing to put in much effort. And since the Old Bay and mayo crusted cod worked out reasonably well, I wondered if the same marinade would work well for chicken thighs.

One small change I made was to raise the temperature, and lengthen the cooking time. My oven isn’t very big, and it doesn’t have a convection function. When I try to roast large batches of meat, it struggles to brown everything adequately at my usual 180C/350F for 20 minutes.

But the beauty of skin-on chicken thighs are that they’re pretty forgiving when it comes to cooking time. I wanted to see if blasting them at 200C/400F for 30 minutes could overcome the issue of overcrowding, and I am happy to report that it did.

The thighs were just as juicy, and tasted even better because of all the well-browned skin. Same amount of food in the same amount of time, except the marinade takes less effort and the end product comes out tastier. I’d say this part of the experiment was a great success!

The potatoes 

The not so great part of this experiment was trying to make smashed potatoes in the skillet. The game plan was to parboil some baby potatoes in salted water, smash them in a skillet and brown them on both sides. Then maybe finish them with garlic, thyme and butter.

First off, the rice cooker is set-and-forget, while cooking potatoes on the stove takes some babysitting. There’s also more cleaning up involved when there are more pots and pans involved. Sure, we have a dishwasher, but simplicity is a virtue in and of itself.

The next hiccup was with the smashing. Maybe I didn’t use the right type of potatoes, or maybe I pressed too hard. But the potatoes disintegrated into tiny chunks when I tried to smash them. I took to halving the second batch instead and browning them that way, which resulted in better structural integrity.

The garlic thyme butter finisher worked out reasonably well, though. The butter went in at the last moment, and the thin slices of garlic turned into savoury garlic chips which really added to the texture. The aroma of fresh thyme is hard to beat too, of course.

At the end of the day, all the parboiling and going back to the skillet and tossing the potatoes in butter felt more like a weekend meal than a weeknight dinner. It was tasty, but for the effort involved I’d much rather just stick rice in a rice cooker and wait for it to do its thing.

But hey, I won’t know what I like until I’ve given it a go. The potatoes tasted great even if they didn’t look that way, and I have a better understanding of my priorities when it comes to cooking.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 1

Dramatis Personae

Served 6.

Boneless skin-on thighs – 1kg

Accept no substitutes. Well, that’s a bit of a hyperbolic statement but I really do believe this is the most meal-prep friendly form of chicken. You can do away with the skin if you’re more conscious of your calories, but bones take up space in the oven and reduce your yield per baking sheet.

Old Bay – 5 teaspoons

The amount suggested is really just a suggestion. In reality, what I did was dust the chicken until the colour looked right.

If you want to be more scientific about it, you could try figure out how much salt you usually use to season chicken and reverse engineer the equivalent amount of Old Bay by looking at the amount of sodium.

I like 0.7% of the protein’s weight in salt when I cook sous vide, so 1kg of chicken would require 7g of NaCl. That’s about 2700mg of sodium.

Since each 1/4 teaspoon of Old Bay has 140mg of sodium, that means you should need about 19 quarter-teaspoons, or 4.75 full teaspoons to get me the same amount of salt. Roughly. Remember, you can always add more, but you can’t take away seasoning.

Wow, that was long. Rant over.

Garlic paste – 1 tablespoon

This is quickly becoming one of my favourite ways to add flavour and umami to my marinades. I originally got this for making Chicken Tikka Masala, but it’s just so quick and convenient to add a spoonful to this and that.

Remember to get your garlic paste and ginger paste separately, because there are situations where you only need the ginger without the garlic. Like taking an already delicious Gyudon to the next level.

Potatoes – 1kg

These potatoes are waxier than the ones I usually work with, and they were a lot cleaner too. Came in a bag from the supermarket, and when I scrubbed them under the faucet the water didn’t even change colour. Which was a pleasant surprise.

Salt the water you parboil these in pretty heavily, to give them a chance to get seasoned throughout. I also sliced a few cloves of ginger really thin, and picked some sprigs of thyme from the plant we have growing in a pot on the windowsill.

Last but not least, a pat of butter to finish with. Save this for last, to avoid it from burning and developing acrid tastes.

Vegetables – 1.2kg

Whatever is on sale, which happened to be 銀絲菜 (ngan see choi / yin si cai). I’m not aware of what the correct translation is – I’ve seen it referred to as Chinese Cabbage, or Silver Cabbage. The latter is kind of a literal translation (it’s name means silver-slivers-vegetable), and the former usually refers to Napa cabbage.

In any case, it’s a close cousin of Napa cabbage and it’s on discount, and that’s all that matters to me. I’m just going to peel the leaves off, give it a rinse, and heat it in the skillet until it isn’t raw.

Executive summary

1. On the day before cooking, mix Old Bay and garlic paste together with the chicken. Marinade overnight in the fridge.
2. The next day, begin by placing potatoes in cold salted water. Bring the pot up to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, preheat the oven. Line baking sheet with aluminium foil and parchment paper.
4. Lay the chicken on the baking sheet in one layer, skin side up. Bake at 200C/400F for 30 minutes.
5. Prepare the garlic, thyme and vegetables.
6. Drain the potatoes when they’re done. Allow to cool for a bit, and cut them in half.
7. Brown the potatoes in a nonstick or cast iron skillet on all sides, working in batches. At the same time, cook vegetables on another stovetop.
8. Once potatoes are browned, return them to the skillet with the butter, garlic and thyme. Toss everything around to combine.
9. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

First things first. The chicken already comes in a ziplock bag, so I’m going to marinade them just like that because I’m a certified lazy bugger.

Day of cooking. The potatoes will take the longest, so I begin with them. Cold water, lid on, they’ll take a while to come up to boil.

The chicken will take a while too, so let’s get them into the oven next. I’ll set the timer and forget about them until it’s time to serve.

Always wash your veggies! The dots on the bottom of the tub is dirt, and the dots floating on the top are bugs.

Have my hands free while waiting for the potatoes, so I took the time to prep the aromatics. The garlic in the foreground is for the vegetables. See how I cut them lengthwise along the clove – this shape results in super tasty garlic chips in the end.

Tested with a chopstick found that the potatoes were done. Drain and reserve, allow to steam off and dry up. Moisture is the enemy of browning.

The stainless steel pan is hot and dirty from boiling the potatoes anyway, so I’m musing it for the vegetables. The lid helps everything wilt and cook faster. Once I have enough space to stir, I season and mix it around.

In the meantime, the potatoes go into the nonstick skillet. Hulk smash! An Italian grandmother would use a wooden spoon, but that’s not how I roll. Let’s see how they turned out …

Not so great. Looks like a mass grave, or a crime scene. Luckily I have the other half of the potatoes left.

Let’s not skimp on effort, and cut them properly. They hold together quite well, which is a good sign. Hope these turn out better …

They do. Butter, thyme and garlic in at the very end, toss around to coat everything. The residual heat should be plenty enough to melt the butter and sizzle the garlic.

Plate up and serve. Bon appetit!

Keep browsing by categories, or by tags: