This easy, one pan roasted lemon chicken dinner is made in one baking dish! The vegetables are baked in chicken stock with the chicken perched right on top! Everything bakes together into one easy, delicious meal!
Cut up all vegetables into approximately ½ - ¾ inch pieces. As long as the potatoes are roughly the same size, all is good. Place them in a 2 ½quart baking dish, or whatever you have. You just want it to be small enough that you have a good 2 inches of vegetables on which to place your chicken.This will keep them from cooking too fast.
Pick and chop the rosemary and oregano, toss on top of the vegetables.Add the picked thyme, black pepper and a generous three-finger pinch of salt or two.
Zest one lemon over the vegetables. Set aside to juice for the pan sauce if making. I like to give the vegetables a stir at this point.
Working gently remove the skin from the breast of the chicken. Start towards the larger end of the breast and work your finger between the skin and the breast. I make a little windshield wiper motion with my finger as I slowly detach the skin all the way down. Once it has been detached, slide the lemon rings between the skin and breast.
Thinly slice half of the other lemon into rings. Squeeze the uncut half over the vegetables and then put the squeezed lemon inside the body cavity of the chicken. Waste not, want not!
Truss the chicken (my video can help!), place on top of the vegetables.
Sprinkle salt on the chicken skin and then bake in preheated oven until the chicken registers 165°F in the thickest part of the thigh. The time will vary greatly depending on the size of your chicken but will most like beat least an hour.
In the last 15 minutes of the chicken cooking place a baking sheet in the oven to preheat if you are going to finish your veggies in the oven.
Let the chicken rest 10 minutes before serving. If you are not going to make a pan sauce, dinner is ready! If you are, then keep going.You have to let the chicken rest anyways…you might as well make a sauce while you wait!
Pour the remaining liquid from the baking dish into a medium sauté pan. Reduce liquid until it has a sauce-like consistency, approximately 2-3minutes. It will run off your spoon and coat it rather than just pouring off like water.
While your sauce reduces, pour the vegetables onto the pre-heated baking sheet and place them back into the oven.