Ina Garten’s Lemon Chicken Recipe Is So Satisfying (Yet Simple), I’m Making it on Repeat

The recipe, originally featured in her 2010 cookbook, Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That?,features nine ingredients, several of which you may have in your kitchen right now (salt, pepper, dried oregano, garlic and thyme). Lemons are broken up into three ingredients, though you really only need two whole ones to provide enough juice, zest and wedges for this dish.

Her recipe also calls for “good olive oil” and dry white wine, so I turned to two of my favorites (Graza Sizzle and Juggernaut Sauvingnon Blanc, the latter of which makes for an excellent pairing to serve with the meal).

Garten calls for boneless, skin-on chicken breasts, and after visiting multiple grocery stores to no avail, I settled for bone-in. The ultra-thick breasts required an extra 15 minutes of cook time, but I’d recommend dealing with bones and the extra oven time over buying boneless, skinless breasts, because the skin makes the meal. As it roasts and the fat renders, it becomes beautifully caramelized and adds a salty, extra savory note that won over even my (very) picky kids (who initially turned their noses at something that looked “so lemon-y”).

This recipe was one of the most-clicked that we featured in roundups, and now, I get why. Beyond the simple ingredients list, the effort involved echoes the title of Garten’s book—it’s truly that easy. The most tedious part is zesting the two lemons, and with a microplane on hand, even that takes little time (and you can listen to a podcast or watch some ambient TV in the background, if you’d like).

Prepping all of the ingredients before starting step one is crucial here, because the steps come together quickly, and you can risk burning your garlic if you need to pause to chop thyme or measure out oil.

Essentially, you’re warming minced garlic, letting it cook in olive oil to infuse it with flavor, then making an easy pan sauce by adding white wine, lemon zest and juice, oregano, thyme and a little salt that you add to the bottom of a baking dish, before nestling the chicken—and eight lemon wedges—inside it.

While Ina calls for using a 9- by 12-inch baking dish, I opted for a 9-inch by 9-inch, since I had two large breasts instead of four. In this case, it allowed the pan sauce to cover more of each chicken breast, resulting in supremely juicy meat. This, combined with the thicker, bone-in meat, meant that my chicken hadn’t quite reached 165 degrees F internally by the time the suggested 30 to 40 minutes was up. Within 15 minutes though, it was up to temp, and, as Garten suggested, I gave it a quick broil for 2 minutes to crisp up the skin a bit more.

Paired with PureWow’s make-ahead mashed potatoes and some simple roasted green beans, this was a meal that practically cooked itself. (The potatoes reheat in basically the same time as it takes to cook the chicken.) It gave me plenty of time to set the table, make drinks for everyone and even—dare I say it?—relax for a few minutes before serving.

The chicken had an excellent garlic-to-lemon ratio, without overpowering the meat, which stayed incredibly succulent. I credit this to it cooking in the sauce, and also Garten’s suggestion to let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting into it, so the juices don’t leak out.

I drizzled the lemon sauce atop the potatoes, instead of gravy, and everyone went back for seconds, my daughter included.

Her verdict? “Even better than dino nuggets!” From a six-year-old, you don’t get higher praise than that.