This dish came about out of necessity, improvised with items I had on hand when some unexpected guests showed up. It was one of my best spontaneous dishes, and now I serve it regularly. The lemon juice tenderizes the chicken and the salty capers and olives mix with the juices to create a sauce.
You can use chicken thighs or buy a whole chicken and cut it into pieces.
Chicken with Olives & Capers
Servings
4 Servings
Ingredients
- 4 large or 8 small organic chicken thighs about 2 pounds
- 1 lemon cut into wedges
- 1 cup mixed pitted olives
- 2 tablespoons drained nonpareil capers
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F, with a rack in the middle position.
- Place the chicken skin side up in a baking dish. Scatter the lemon wedges, olives, and capers on top of the chicken.
- Pour the lemon juice and olive oil over the chicken and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- Bake until golden, basting with the juices once, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of a thigh reads 165°F. Serve.
- Text credit: Excerpted from SWEET PAUL EAT & MAKE, © 2014 by Paul Lowe Einlyng. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
- Photo credit: © Alexandra Grablewski.
Love the suggestions, the raisins must add a nice touch of sweet.
This is a variation of chicken with capers, olives and raisins I’ve made for years. I haven’t tried it this way yet, but suggest sprinkling raisins onto the chicken as well. Another option, to boil the raisins, olives and capers in 1 cup of white vermouth and pour the whole thing over the chicken before baking. It’s incredibly yummy.
This recipe was nice and easy. I removed the skin (as I always do) and it came out fine. I added a little paprika to the top since I removed the skin and thought it needed a little color. I think it could have been a little more flavorful but I’m not sure what I would add, but I will try this again!
This recipe is an easy, delicious weeknight dinner. I served the chicken with couscous and roasted broccoli. I also thought the cooking time in the recipe was under, I cooked my chicken thighs for about 45 min. I partially baked the chicken in convection mode to crisp up the skin but 5 min under the broiler would also work.
This is a basic type of chicken recipe that does not take much time to prep. The only problem I had was with the amount of salt from the capers and the olives. I would also have added a bit of white wine to bring the flavors home so to speak.
This chicken dish is extremely easy and delicious. I used boneless breasts and ended up cooking it a bit longer than the recipe recommended. I added extra capers and used pitted black olives. Terrific.
This recipe was quick and simple. I used a cut-up chicken because I didn’t have just thighs in my freezer. I also used a mixture of black and green olives. I don’t have a meat thermometer, and it didn’t look quite done at 30 minutes. I baked it for about 45 minutes and it was perfect.
This was very easy to make; few ingredients and little baking time. My husband was very happy!
Although the picture doesn’t show all the ingredients on the top of the chicken the recipe stated to do it this way. I had my doubts if the chicken would cook this way and eventually had to take the olives, capers and lemon wedges off the chicken and move them to the side so that the chicken would then cook. The chicken came out extremely moist and was a pleasure to eat. The negative is that unless one dipped the chicken into the lemon (gravy) whilst eating the flavour had not gone into the chicken itself. However I really enjoyed it and plan to make it again. It was a really easy and quick dish to make. I made it with another recipe on this site – the cauliflower and orange salad and the two dishes really complemented each other.
I ended up making this recipe with a whole broiler chicken but it worked really well. the flavors and ingredients are classic, so really what could go wrong?!
I also felt it needed some white wine, just to bring the flavors home!
the only thing didn’t like from the recipe is that the cooking time is based off a meat thermometer which is hard because I would say most people don’t have one so I would say the chicken in this recipe needs about 40min and my chicken was about 1 hour and 15min.
This sounds very yummy. I love the flavor from capers, and anything goes better with olives.