Roast Garlic Chicken Tray Bake with Tomatoes & Green Beans
Crispy chicken, jammy tomatoes, green beans, one tray. Done.
Bone-in chicken thighs roasted with vegetables on one tray. Crispy skin, tender meat and almost no washing-up — the laziest proper dinner you can cook.
Nutrition · per serving
Method
- 1
Heat the oven, heat the tray
Oven to 180°C fan. Slide a heavy roasting tray in while it comes up to heat — a cold tray steams the skin, a hot tray crisps it. Pat the chicken thighs properly dry with kitchen paper; wet skin will never go golden.
- 2
Season like you mean it
Split the olive oil: keep about a third back in the bottle for finishing, the rest is for coating. Rub the thighs with just enough oil to slick the skin, then work in the crushed garlic, thyme leaves, sea salt and a good crack of black pepper. Get it under the skin where you can — that is where the flavour lands. Skin side up, every time.
- 3
Chicken first, on its own
Lay the thighs skin-side up on the hot tray with space between them. Roast for 20 minutes on their own so the skin renders and starts to gold up. No crowding, no veg yet — the veg would just release water and stall the skin.
- 4
Add the veg to the pan sauce
Scatter the green beans, cherry tomatoes and shallots (eschalots) around the chicken (not underneath). Give the veg the smallest drizzle of oil — just enough to gloss them — then roll them in the fat that has run out of the thighs. Back in the oven for another 15 - 20 minutes until the skin is deep gold and crisp, the beans blister, the tomatoes collapse into a jammy little pan sauce and the shallots are soft and sweet. Chicken pulls at 74°C in the thickest part.
- 5
Rest, drizzle, serve
Rest the chicken for 5 minutes on the tray — it keeps cooking, keeps the juices in. Spoon the garlicky, thyme-flecked pan juices back over the top, then finish the whole tray with the reserved raw olive oil straight from the bottle — that fresh, peppery hit is what lifts the sauce. Taste a bean, adjust salt, one more crack of pepper. Done.