This One-Pan Rooster Dinner Is the Definition of a Excessive-Reward Recipe

I’ve been on a mission just lately—properly, extra of a side-quest, if I am being sincere—to get extra dwelling cooks to organize dishes with two sauces. It is a type of issues that sounds annoyingly cheffy, but when approached thoughtfully, may be simple. I’ve already revealed a smashed potato recipe as proof of idea, and I am now including another to the record. It is a double whammy of cooking effectivity, being each a easy two-sauce recipe and a easy sheet-pan dinner recipe. The outline makes it sound like a whole lot of work, however I swear it is not: roasted rooster thighs with a salad of roasted asparagus and scallions, recent uncooked fennel, and a vivid lemon French dressing; an olive-yogurt sauce; and a second sauce of rooster fats drippings. Woof, that is a mouthful. And a scrumptious one, if I do say so myself.

The recipe works so effectively in these methods:

• First, it takes benefit of a highly regarded (450°F) oven to deeply roast each rooster thighs (which get higher and higher with continued cooking) and tender spring asparagus in a comparatively brief period of time. Simply saying it out loud: I would like very tender, very delicate roasted asparagus right here, I am not searching for a vivid inexperienced, crisp-tender end result. Embrace the overcooked vegetable! (As a result of they’re scrumptious.)
• Whereas that principally hands-off roasting is going on, you’ll be able to whip up a ridiculously easy olive-yogurt sauce by stirring an olive purée or tapenade into Greek yogurt. That is additionally a great time to thinly slice a bulb of uncooked fennel for the “salad” element.
• The rooster and asparagus are drizzled with olive oil earlier than roasting, and as they do, a scrumptious second sauce kinds on the sheet pan, a combination of olive oil, rendered rooster fats, and juices from the rooster and greens. There’s actually no further work, and but you get a second sauce that works as each the dressing for the fennel salad (with a bit of additional recent olive oil and lemon juice added) and as a gilded, saucy contact on the completed plate.
• The salad is enhanced with fennel fronds, that are simply trimmings from the bulb, plus some torn recent mint leaves, which add an exquisite freshness with little or no work.

This can be a excellent instance of my thought of a “good” sheet-pan recipe. It takes benefit of roasting the whole lot on a rimmed baking sheet for pace and ease, whereas maximizing the time (nearly all prep occurs whereas the rooster and asparagus are roasting) and benefiting from each element, right down to the juices on the baking sheet. The result’s restaurant-worthy, however the work doesn’t require a brigade of cooks and a backup crew of dishwashers. And the 2 sauces half? You possibly can act prefer it’s a flex—it’s going to be our little secret about how little you probably did to attain it.

Cook dinner Mode
(Maintain display awake)