Hey there.  I swear I don’t just live on baked goods and granola.  See!  Chicken!

It’s a constant battle to find exciting chicken recipes.  A true war.  How much sad, flavorless chicken have I consumed in my life?  How many times have I eaten chicken and had to wash it down with water just to get the dry bite of chicken chalk down? And then wash it down further with wine just to get over how sketchy the chicken I had eaten probably was?

So much so that I’ve found myself avoiding chicken in all ways.  And that’s not really fair to chicken.  Chicken should be welcome in my life… but not via janky, horrible recipes (or lack thereof).

This is probably why I end up putting chickies in pot pie or stew or some sort of fried situation…. otherwise…. I’m bored… and scared.  Scared that cooking up a little chicken breast by itself can only end badly.

But it can end deliciously! Like here- with this simple and tasty recipe.

This dish comes together in less than an hour and was perfect with a chickpea salad and some farro (those recipes coming soon!).

In other news: roasted grapes taste awesome.

From SmittenKitchen

You’ll need:

5 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (you can use any cut of chicken just make sure it’s bone-in, skin-on)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup seedless grapes (I left some on the stem)

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives

2 shallots, cut into wedges

0.5 cup dry white wine

0.5 cup chicken or veggie broth (I used veg)

Fresh Rosemary

Salt/Pep

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.  Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper.  Heat oil in a cast iron skillet (or heavy skillet) over medium-high heat.  Make sure the oil gets nice and hot.  Place the chicken in the skillet skin side down (I only did two at a time).  This is how you’ll get that beautiful color on the chicken so really let it hang out on there… 2-3 minutes.  Then flip and let cook a couple more minutes.  If you take out a chicken breast and don’t feel like it browned enough don’t feel bad putting it back on the skillet.  Pale chicken looks kind of gross.

Place the chicken in a roasting pan, skin side up.  Surround with grapes, olives and shallot.  Tuck in sprigs of rosemary.

Pre-oven

Roast the chicken in the oven (uncovered) until it is cooked through and the juices run through.  My cuts of chicken were pretty thick so it took about 30 minutes.

Transfer the chicken, grapes, and olives to a platter.  Discard any big sprigs rosemary that look dried out/dead.  I placed the juices in the roasting pan right over two burners on my stove but you could transfer to a skillet if you wanted.  Add wine and chicken broth and bring liquid to a boil, scraping up any brown bits, until it has reduced by half (2-3 minutes).  I strained my sauce (you don’t have to) and then poured over the chicken.  To be honest you could skip the sauce if you wanted.  That would be crazy to do but if you were anxious to get this served and didn’t want to do a sauce I wouldn’t judge you.

Garnish chicken with fresh rosemary and serve.  Yum.  Chicken.