When your garden produces herbs and fruits, you use them. When I saw how tall the dill had grown, I decided I was going to combine a few sprigs with some of the kaffir limes that had been sitting on the kitchen island for days.
Easy and fast lunch or dinner. And you only need one pan to cook it. The pan has to be large enough though to accommodate the chicken in a single layer to ensure even browning and cooking.
It starts with marinating the chicken. This is not a sponsored post. But we love Badia products (the ones we’ve tried anyway) and we highly recommend the cilantro lime pepper salt. If you can’t find it, and you have to substitute some other kind of seasoning, the flavor of the cooked dish will naturally be different.
After the chicken thighs had soaked up the seasoning, they go into a pan where butter has melted and started to get bubbly. You don’t want to skip the browning part because this gives the chicken better color, flavor and texture. You want the surface to get a bit crusty so that, after cooking, the chicken won’t have the mouth feel of boiled meat.
The chicken needs liquid to cook in. While the thighs will expel water, that won’t be enough to cook them through. If you rely on that alone, the butter will burn before the chicken is cooked to that stage when the meat is safe to eat. So, pour in water. Just a cup. You want a sauce by the end of cooking time without turning the dish into a soup.
The chicken thighs are already flavorful because they had marinated in the seasoning, but you want to heighten the flavors and to give the dish a wonderful aroma. A mixture of lime juice and dill is perfect for this job. The lime juice provides tang that the dish needs so that it doesn’t come out as one-dimensional. The dill gives it a citrusy aroma without added acidity.
To create a beautiful sauce that will coat the chicken thighs and give them a glossy finish, flour is dissolved in water and poured into the pan. A few minutes of simmering and the flour mixture turns the watery cooking liquid into a beautiful sauce.
Ingredients
- 1 kilogram chicken thighs bone-in and skin-on
- 2 tablespoons cilantro lime pepper salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 sprigs fresh dill
- 2 limes (kaffir limes were used here)
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- salt to taste
- lime wedges to garnish
- dill sprigs to garnish
Instructions
- Wipe the chicken thighs with a kitchen towel, place in a mixing bowl, add the cilantro lime pepper seasoning and mix well.
- Cover the bowl and let the chicken marinate in the fridge for two hours.
- Melt the butter in a frying pan.
- Arrange the chicken in a single layer skin side down. Over high heat, leave until the skins are nicely browned.
- Flip the chicken thighs over and brown the opposte sides.
- Pour in a cup of water and bring to the boil.
- Set the heat to low and cover the pan. Cook the chicken thighs for 20 to 25 minutes.
- Strip the dill and discard the stalks. Roughly chop the dill.
- Squeeze the juice from the limes and mix with the dill (don't forget to remove wayward seeds).
- Spoon the dill-lime mixture over the chicken thighs.
- Dissolve the flour in a quarter cup of water.
- Pour into the pan between the chicken thighs.
- Move the chicken thighs around to make sure that the flour solution is distributed evenly.
- Continue cooking, uncovered, for about five minutes to cook the flour through.
- Taste the sauce and add salt, if needed.
- Lift the chicken thighs and transfer to a serving plate.
- Drizzle the thickened sauce over them.
- Garnish with lime wedges and dill sprigs before serving.
