Greek Lemon-Butter Chicken & Smashed Potatoes

Sometimes you don’t mess with a classic, but in this case, we think it's worth your while. Smashed potatoes and an herby feta and olive topping lend an exciting spin to one of our most beloved recipes: lemon-butter chicken. In this recipe, an extra-crispy texture on the potatoes and a briny herbal finish (thanks to the olives) amplifies all the classic flavors without taking away from the goodness of the original recipe. You can’t go wrong with either, but if you want to serve it often, get both in the chicken dinner repertoire.

To make this, start by boiling the potatoes until tender and smashable. This allows for the already cooked potatoes to just focus on crisping up in the oven rather than cooking and then crisping. For the crispiest potatoes, coat them in butter before smashing them. It’s much easier to toss the whole potatoes with butter than the already smashed ones, which would fall apart.

When you’re shopping for this recipe, here are some tips: Look for chicken thighs that are roughly around the same size so they all cook evenly and are done at the same time—the sweet spot is 6 ounces per thigh. Mini red, mini Yukon gold, or mini creamer potatoes all work in this recipe. For the parsley, curly or flat leaf both work here. For the olives, Castelvetrano olives are the sort of olives that can turn an olive hater into an olive lover (trust me, I know a few converts), but Kalamata, black, or whatever olive suits your fancy can be used. 

If you love-lemon butter, then don’t stop here at chicken and potatoes. Try it on pasta, steak, salmon, gnocchi, and even baked into cookies. 

If you made this, let us know what you think!