I love roast chicken. I love roast chicken and all the trimmings. I especially love a Mediterranean roast chicken. But sometimes, I just can’t get on board with the amount of effort that it takes. Calculating timings, parboiling potatoes, turning the oven temperature up and down, stressing over Yorkshire puddings and sweating over gravy. Some days I’m in the mood for it – some days I’m just not.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still want to enjoy a delicious roast chicken. So, I developed this recipe.
This is THE easiest roast chicken recipe in the world. I dare you to find an easier one!
Everything goes in the oven at the same time, comes out at the same time and is cooked in the same roasting tin. Barely any washing up!
The garlic yoghurt is optional but is seriously easy to put together and ties up all of the flavours perfectly, so I would recommend it.
This is the perfect recipe for when you have guests visiting and want to serve them something special, but without spending hours in the kitchen. In fact, after 10 minutes of prep, you’re done!
The Mediterranean Roast Chicken
I brined my chicken the day before. If you have the time, I do suggest doing this – it makes the chicken super tasty and juicy, and cuts the cooking time, but you don’t have to. My brining recipe takes about 2 minutes of work the day before, then you just leave it in the fridge overnight. But, like I say, this is optional and you can make this recipe perfectly well with an unbrined chicken. Just roast for as long as the butcher (or packaging!) tells you to.
The Vegetables
This is one of those great versatile recipes that you can change up depending on what you have in the fridge, or what’s in season. I used potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and red peppers. You could use carrots, pumpkin, leek, celery, aubergine – almost any meaty vegetable would work well here. Just make sure you follow the strategy of cutting them all to a similar size to make sure they cook evenly.
The Sauce
Using the brined chicken means that the meat is incredibly juicy, and the vegetables I’ve used – particularly the tomatoes – create a good volume of tasty liquid so I don’t think that a specific gravy is needed for this recipe, just the garlic yoghurt and a drizzle of good olive oil to bring it all together.
Of course, you could make a traditional chicken gravy if you like – that would be very tasty, but additional effort that I didn’t want to include in this recipe!
This recipe will take 1.5 hours (with minimum effort) and will serve 4.
Got leftovers afterwards? Why not make them into this spectacular leftover chicken, leek and mushroom filo pie.
One Pan Mediterranean Roast Chicken and Vegetables with Garlic Yoghurt
Save This RecipeIngredients
- 1 whole large chicken approx 2kg ideally brined for 24 hours
- 500 g baby potatoes
- 2 courgettes
- 2 red peppers
- 200 g vine tomatoes
- 150 g chorizo diced
- 50 g green olives destoned
- 3 tbsps olive oil
For the yoghurt
- 150 g Greek yoghurt
- 4 cloves garlic
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180?
- Chop the courgettes and red peppers into pieces about the same size as the baby potatoes. Half any potatoes that are much bigger than the others.
- Arrange the courgettes, red peppers and potatoes in the base of a large roasting pan. Add the tomatoes, olives and diced chorizo.
- Place the chicken on top and drizzle with the olive oil, season with salt and pepper.
- Put in the oven on the middle shelf and cook for one hour – check that the juices run clear when you stab the chicken with a skewer
- While the chicken is cooking, make the yoghurt. Peel and grate the garlic cloves, then stir into the yoghurt along with a pinch of salt and pepper.
- After an hour, remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. You can cover in foil to keep everything warm.
- To serve, give everyone a big spoonful of the roasted vegetables and pieces of chicken. Drizzle with the yoghurt and a little olive oil.
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