Description
A delicious and easy recipe for sheet pan chicken thighs with asparagus.
Ingredients
Scale
- 8 large bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- 1/2 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1 T Spike Seasoning
- 1 tsp. Italian Seasoning
- 1/2 tsp. Onion Powder
- 1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder
- 1 lb. asparagus spears
- 1 lemon, for zesting
- salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Trim the chicken thighs well, removing excess skin and the pockets of fat on the back side; use kitchen shears for this. Optional: make small slits in the skin of the chicken.
- Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, Spike, Italian Herb Seasoning, Onion Powder, and Garlic Powder to make the marinade.
- Put trimmed chicken into a Ziploc bag and pour in about 2/3 of the marinade.
- Seal bag and let chicken marinate in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours (or longer will be great, even all day while you’re at work).
- When you’re ready to cook chicken, preheat oven to 350F/176C (with the sheet pan placed inside) while you drain chicken in a colander until it’s well drained and comes to room temperature. (Catch the excess marinade and discard.)
- Arrange chicken on hot sheet pan and bake for 25 minutes.
- While chicken cooks, break one piece of asparagus to see where the woody part starts and trim all asparagus to that size, then cut each piece of asparagus in half on the diagonal.
- Zest a lemon and whisk one tablespoon of the zest into the reserved marinade. You can squeeze the lemon after zesting and freeze the juice and also freeze the extra lemon zest if you have some.
- Remove sheet pan from the oven and increase temperature to 450F/232C.
- Check to see if liquid has been released from the chicken. If it has, use a wadded-up paper towel to blot away excess liquid.
- Tuck asparagus pieces around the chicken, making sure it’s in a single layer as much as possible. Brush reserved marinade on the chicken and asparagus.
- Put sheet pan back in the oven and bake for 4-6 minutes or slightly longer (depending on how thick the asparagus is and how crisp you prefer your asparagus). Asparagus will cook more when it broils, so it should still be quite firm at this point.
- Turn oven to broil and broil the chicken and asparagus for about 3 minutes, or until the top of the chicken is nicely browned and asparagus is getting slightly charred. Watch it carefully!
- Season with salt and fresh-ground black pepper as desired and serve hot.
Notes
- We used extra-large chicken thighs. If you only find small thighs, the baking time will be a bit shorter.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 thigh and 1/4 lb. asparagus
- Calories: 420
- Sugar: 2g
- Sodium: 600mg
- Fat: 30g
- Saturated Fat: 8g
- Unsaturated Fat: 20g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 8g
- Fiber: 3g
- Protein: 35g
- Cholesterol: 120mg