‘Tis the season for apple cider…and apple cider recipes!
After making these delicious caramel apple cider cookies earlier this month, I thought it would be fun to make some sort of main dish with my favorite homemade apple cider. So after picking up some simple (and very inexpensive!) ingredients, I ended up with this amazing apple cider baked chicken recipe!
It only takes about ten minutes to prep (perfect before work in the morning), and then after marinating all day, you just pop everything in the oven. And voila! This simple and healthy dish — celebrating the goodness of baked apples, chicken, potatoes, lemons and herbs — will be ready to go.
(And did I mention that your home will smell absolutely amazing?!?)
Definitely a fantastic meal to bookmark for apple cider season!
Apple Cider Baked Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 large onion, peeled and cut into eighths
- 1 large lemon, sliced into thin rounds
- 2 cups apple cider, homemade or storebought
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme, plus more for garnish
- 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
- 2 tsp. Dijon mustard
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- 6-8 chicken legs or thighs
- 2 large apples, each sliced into eighths
- 1 lb. small, red or Yukon Gold potatoes, halved
Instructions
- Place a gallon size heavy-duty zip-top bag into a large bowl. Place the onion and next 10 ingredients into the zip-top bag, combining well. Add the chicken to the marinade. Close the bag, place in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 4 hours or up to 24 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the chicken pieces in a large roasting pan skin-side up. Pour all of the marinade, including onions and lemons over and around the pieces. Tuck the apples and potatoes around the chicken. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring once halfway through to re-coat everything with the marinade.
- Arrange chicken and potatoes on a platter and sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves.
Notes
Did you make this?Let me know how it turned out in the comments below!Ali’s Tip:
Feel free to add some mushrooms, red peppers and/or other favorite vegetables to this!
Source:
Adapted from the U.S. Apple Association.
I made this tonight using a dutch oven and only apple juice (from my juicer) instead of apple cider. I topped the dutch oven with veggies and cooked for 1h15min. It came out delicious!
The vegetables had more flavor than the chicken, but the chicken had a great texture.
I then just let some excess liquid boil off after I cooked it, as I put extra water in the pot to cover the meat and veggies before putting it in the oven.
Also, I processed the onions in a food processor to make a paste which I mixed in with the other marinade ingredients.
My hubby loved it.
Thanks!
This was delicious! I will definitely make it again
Can I use chicken breast instead of thighs?
Absolutely!
Going to try this tonight! By the looks of the comments I’m only going to use one cup of cider (in my case apple juice), double the vinegar and add a few extra cloves of just crushed garlic as well. I’m not using apples and I’m hesitant on the potatoes.
Hope it turns out as delicious as it looks!
Not very good. It smelled very good but after marinating all day, the dish had very little flavor.
same here! and my potatoes were still hard after an hour and 15 minutes of cooking. I was very disappointed. Kinda glad I wasn’t the only one with this issue.
This looks so good! Very seasonal and super easy!
What a wonderful recipe. I just saw it on Pinterest. Will be re-pinning this. I love how you braised the chicken in apple cider. I can just imagine how good this tastes.
I tried this recipe today after finding it on Pinterest. It looked so good but the outcome was surprisingly bland. There was far too much liquid and the potatoes also had to be cooked on a pan in the oven by themselves after the chicken was done. Maybe adding more vinegar would add some flavor?
I would like to know if you can use other pieces of chicken in this recipe? Such as breast or wings?
Thank You
Made this the other night while hubby was on post for CQ duty. Thought it’d be a nice, easy, HOT, meal to drop off for him during a 24 hour shift. It went really well! Various reports of this being a bit too sweet made me add some balsamic vinegar (just a splash, really) to the mix before I put it in the oven. I also cooked halfway then stirred to spread the marinade (really I just flipped each piece over for a minute then flipped them all back. My pan wasn’t really deep enough for stirring.) Then, when I put it back in, I cranked the oven to 375 to get a nice carmelization on the tops of the chicken. That worked out rather well! I still had TONS of liquid when finished cooking. But that could be from omitting the apples and potatoes which would probably drink up quite a bit of the liquid. Oh! And I substituted Simply Apple for Apple Cider since it’s a little out of season. I think that also helped with cutting down the sweetness.
Served over rice with some roasted carrots. Was yummy!