Easy prep meets minimal cleanup in this recipe for ranch roasted chicken that demonstrates the superiority of boneless thighs for meal prep.

Time: 4/5
It’s surprising how quickly time passes when listening to podcasts while dicing 6 meals’ worth of vegetables.

Effort: 3/5
Set and forget chicken in oven, foil and parchment paper obviates cleanup.

Archaeologists Need Not Apply

A few weeks ago, I made the most out of a grocery shopping mistake and experimented with using bone-in chicken drumsticks instead of my usual boneless skin-on thighs for meal prep. I won’t call it a failure – I made some delicious chicken that fed me all week. But the whole experience made me appreciate boneless chicken thighs even more.

A side-by-side test would be the best way to compare and contrast bone-in versus boneless chicken for meal prep. Regrettably, as much as I admire the scientific process and respect the cooking nerds that go all out, I’m not in the position to dedicate that much time and effort to such a project. 

Instead, I went with the next best thing: to do boneless and bone-in chicken meal preps, back to back. Same ingredients, same method, with the only difference being the cook time (as I will get into later). Just like with the drumsticks, I punched up the ranch powder with some garlic paste and lemon juice. I let the chicken marinate overnight before roasting in the oven.

Final verdict? Boneless chicken thighs win over bone-in. Because the meat was laid out flat instead of wrapped around a bone, the boneless cuts were thinner than the bone-in pieces. The chicken took literally half as long to cook, which means both less time for moisture loss from evaporation AND a shorter time to table.

In addition, the absence of the bone means more edible mass, which translates into an additional portion per sheet tray I put in the oven. More chicken, juicier meat and in less time? I’m sold. I’m a pragmatic home cook trying to solve the problem of good-enough meals with the least amount of work.

Man cannot live on chicken alone, as much fun as that initially sounds. So I made a pasta salad (much like this one) to go with the ranch roasted chicken thighs, because a cold lunch sounds like an increasingly good idea as the weather warms up. It might also be because I associate the ranch so strongly with my great American adventure, and I subconsciously avoided pairing rice with it. But fear not, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 3

Dramatis Personae

Served 6.

Chicken

Boneless, skin on chicken thighs – 1kg, 12 pieces 

My favourite meal prep protein of all time. The brand I like comes in a ziplock bag, so once I defrost the chicken I can do all the marinating right in the same packaging. No mess, no fuss, no dishes.

Powdered ranch dressing – 4 tablespoons

4 tablespoons is about 12 teaspoons, which is enough to marinate 6 chicken breasts according to the package instructions. American chicken breasts are huge, so assuming those are 200g apiece means I have enough to season 1.2kg of chicken. Which is more than I have. Go big or go home, baby!

Garlic paste – 1 tablespoon

Great for marinades, curries and stews. Store-bought jarred paste won’t taste as pungent as freshly grated garlic, and it will come with a bit of extra acidity from the canning process. But I want some acidity anyway, and the convenience is well worth the trade off in flavour.

Lemon juice – 2 teaspoons

Bottled or fresh, depending on how quickly you go through lemons. I keep bottled lemon juice, because lemons aren’t a big part of my Asian-biased repertoire. Whenever I use a fresh lemon, I end up using the juice from half of it and having no way to use the other half except as a deodoriser for the fridge. 

Lots of black pepper, and salt to taste

Freshly cracked pepper hits differently than pepper powder that has been sitting around since goodness knows when. The more black pepper the merrier, within reason. Unlike salt, which I know from experience that I only need a tiny pinch.

Pasta salad

Fusilli – 500g

Fusilli is my favourite shape for pasta salads because of all the surface area they have – it makes them a great delivery vehicle for getting dressing into your system. I like to cook them a bit further than al dente, because starches tend to harden and set as they cool.

Zucchini – 2

This would have been cucumbers, but I happened to have two zucchini lying around. To be diced and briefly sautéd before mixed in with the other veggies. I’m not used to eating vegetables raw, and it’s simple enough to cook them for a bit.

Bell peppers – 3, medium

A great vegetable that I don’t cook enough of. To be finely diced and sautéed with the zucchini, for their sweet flavour and some crunch.

Shallot – 1, large

Adds a nice aroma and crunch to the salad. Be careful not to use too much lest the onion-y taste overpowers everything else, especially if you’re going to leave them raw.

Pickles – to taste

Since I’m taking the pickle jar out for the brine anyway, I might as well chop up some of the pickles and toss them into the salad as well. Serves a similar purpose as sun dried tomatoes in similar recipes.

Dressing

Pickle brine – 6 tablespoons

Bright, briny, and pleasantly tart. Depending on how salty your pickle brine is, you might not even need extra salt. I first discovered this trick of using pickle brine in salad dressings when I made a Pasta Salad to go with chicken, and I’ve kept coming back to it since.

Vinegar – 6 tablespoons

As an adjunct to the acidity of the pickle brine, and also to cut the richness of the olive oil that’s coming later.

Dijon mustard – 1 teaspoon

Here for the emulsifying properties it has. I like to dig out a dollop of mustard from the jar with a fork, then use the same fork to whisk the olive oil into the rest of the dressing. Mayonnaise serves the same function, and is a great substitute for mustard.

Olive oil – 3 tablespoons

Fruity, floral, and rich. Extra virgin is not a hard requirement (as I will be sautéing some of the vegetables in it) but nice to have. My dressing is more acid-forward than most other recipes, mostly because I’m conscious of how much calories are in my meals. If I didn’t have that concern, I would go with a ratio like two parts oil to one part acid.

Executive summary

1. The day before, add marinade ingredients and massage into chicken. Refrigerate overnight.
2. Cook pasta according to package instructions, and drain. While pasta cooks, wash and dice vegetables.
3. Sauté zucchini and peppers in a bit of olive oil, and reserve. Whisk pickle brine, vinegar, mustard and more oil in the same pan.
4. Add the rest of the salad ingredients, and toss to combine. Refrigerate overnight.
5. On day of cooking, preheat oven to 200C/400F. Line a sheet tray with foil and parchment paper.
6. Roast chicken at 200C/400F for 30 minutes, or until skin is browned and juices run clear.
7. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. Chicken gets marinated right inside the bag it comes from. No mess, no fuss.

Next, I bring a pan of water to boil. Pasta gets cooked a minute or so past al dente, then drained.

While I’m waiting for the pasta to cook, let’s dice some veggies! This is how I like to prep my peppers: shave the walls off of the pith, then cut sections into strips, then across the strips to dice.

Whew. That took a while! But now I can sauté the zucchini and the peppers.

Veggies in pan, brief sauté, then reserve. The veggie juice can join the dressing.

Bit more oil in, plus the rest of the dressing ingredients. Whisky whisky, mixy mixy, then into the fridge to chill.

It’s the next day, and it’s time to cook. I preheat the oven while lining the sheet tray, then left the thighs there for 20 minutes while I watched TV. True story.

Dinner is served! The browning looks more extensive than the drumsticks, which were roasted for twice as long. Let’s see how we did taste-wise …

Crisp skin, flesh dripping with juice. Consider this my mic drop for boneless thighs over bone-in.

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