Sweet Vidalia Onion Chicken Thighs

This is a super easy recipe that tastes great!

Ingredients

• 4 Chicken Thighs, with excess fat trimmed off
• 1 Large Vidalia Onion
• Salt
• Pepper
• Thyme
• Orange Juice
• Deli Mustard
• Flour + Water Slurry (for optional gravy thickening)
• Chicken broth / bullion (maybe need it for sauce)

Steps

• Trim the excess fat off the chicken thighs,
• Season the 4 chicken thighs on all sides with salt, pepper, and thyme (or any other spices/herbs you think might go well)
• Heat a large skillet or cast iron pan over high heat to get it nice and hot (but not all the way to smoking in the case of cast iron). The pan will be going into the oven, so keep that in mind. If you don’t have an oven-safe pan then you could use a baking dish or whatever.
• Place the 4 chicken thighs into the pan, skin side down
• While the chicken thighs brown, cut the onion into 4 large slices like you’re making large onion rings, but keep them together in one piece.
• When the chicken thighs are browned, remove them from the pan, place the 4 onion rounds into the pan, and then place a chicken thigh, skin side up, on each. (you can also do this without having to remove the chicken from the pan bu stacking them all together and working your way around the pan building the onion+chicken stacks – I always save creating a dirty dish when I can!).
• While the chicken and onions cook, start some rice.
• Remove the chicken when it reaches whatever temperature you like your chicken at (165 degrees fahrenheight is the official temp, but I usually go a tad higher since my gauge might be in a weird spot, and chicken thighs are much more forgiving to a little more heat than breasts).
• Place the chicken and onion rounds (carefully! They will want to fall apart) on a plate under some foil to let it rest / stay warm).

Pan Sauce / Gravy

• Place the pan the chicken was in back on the stove with high heat. It should have plenty of juices and fat from the chicken.
• Add about a cup of orange juice and a tablespoon of mustard (this is relative, the actual amounts will depend on how much juice you have in the pan).
• Mix these together and then taste it. You may have to:
  • Add more salt and pepper
  • Add more orange juice or mustard if one or the other is overpowering
  • Add some chicken bouillon / broth if there’s not enough chicken flavor.
• When it tastes right you can now optionally add some flour/water slurry to thicken it up, or leave it the way it is.

Serving

I like to serve it on a bed of rice, then the chicken, topped with one of the onion rounds, with sauce over the top. You can also go rice > onion > chicken > sauce if you want to show off the chicken more and make sure the skin stays crispier, but in my experience both will result in the skin not staying “crispy”, so why not put the large onion slice on top since it’s really almost more of a feature of this recipe – it’s the thing that’s “a little different”.

Serve with a side salad, or whatever vegetables you want.