Honey Basil Chicken Thighs with Roasted Apples, Onion and Daikon
Honey Basil Chicken Thighs with Roasted Apples, Onion and Daikon
Rustic, delicious, and the best use for your fall apple bounty! And all in one pan, to boot!
Ingredients
- 6-8 bone-in skin on chicken thighs
- 2 TBSP unsalted butter or olive oil,divided
- Kosher salt and pepper, to taste
- 2 apples, cut into eighths and then halved
- 1 yellow onion, cut into quarters and then halved
- 1 daikon radish, sliced into 1 inch thick coins
- 1 TBSP honey
- 1 tsp paprika
- A handful of fresh basil leaves
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Heat butter or olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apple, onion and daikon and sauté until golden. Remove to a bowl and prep your chicken.
- Step 2 Season the chicken thighs generously with ground pepper and kosher salt – my opinion is you can never overseason! Add additional tablespoon of butter or oil to the hot skillet. Place thighs, skin side down, onto the cast iron skillet and allow the skin to crisp up, for about 8-10 minutes
- Step 3 Flip your chicken thighs skin side up and nestle the apples, onion and daikon around the chicken. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with paprika.
- Step 4 Roast in the oven for an additional 25-30 minutes or until the internal temp of the chicken reaches 165 degrees. Sprinkle with freshly chopped basil leaves and serve immediately, with some extra pan sauce drizzled on top.
Whew – what a month it’s been! Apologies for the longer than usual hiatus, but for those who are following along religiously – you know I have a good excuse. We’ve been building up to this all year, and on Labor Day weekend we finally moved! All of 5 miles, but still the same amount of stress and upheaval as moving cross country. The move itself took the better part of Labor Day weekend but it’s taken us a good few weeks to fully get settled in the new digs. We still have a ways to go in terms of unpacking and decorating, but we’ve made decent progress. Which means I’m back in the kitchen, planning lots of fun fall recipes for you and recreating some old favorites too.
We hit up the apple orchard for our annual trip just last weekend so you know that anything we’re making right now is finding some creative way to use up ‘dem apples! My one-pan cast-iron specials are definitely a go to on a busy weeknight so this was a no brainer. Apples and onions are pretty standard pairing for chicken, especially with the honey (speaking of, if this isn’t the ultimate Rosh Hashanah dish, I don’t know what is!) but the decision to add daikon radishes probably piqued your interest. We picked up one at the farmer’s market last week and I have been dying to find a creative use for it. We made a cucumber-daikon salad (super tasty and easy to prep), but this was a different approach. In contrast to the American radish you are probably with, the daikon is more meaty and subtle in flavor. It literally means “fat root,” so I was really calling on its root vegetable essence for this dish. It paired so nicely with the sweetness of the apple and tenderness of the onion, especially once it soaked up all of the pan flavorings. If you don’t have access to daikon, by all means substitute a parsnip, or some cubes of Yukon potato or sweet potato, you’ll just want to boil the potato first.
To pull this all together, it’s just a few simple steps, and then you can let your oven do the rest of the work. I started out by sautéing the apples and veggies to give them a nice caramelized coating. Then I remove them from the pan, and replace with the chicken to crisp up that skin – essential step in my opinion! Then return everything to the skillet and place it in the oven to do the rest of the cooking. From start to finish, your actual hands on time is probably only 20 minutes. You’re welcome! Leave us a comment below and let us know what you think!
