Kotopoulo Lemonato (‘Κοτόπουλο λεμονάτο’, literally ‘lemony chicken’) is one of those Greek oven-baked dishes where chicken and potatoes cook together in a roasting tin, infusing each other with flavour. The classic version is simple: lemon, olive oil, oregano, garlic, and perhaps a splash of wine to deglaze the pan. We’re showing you a slightly richer variation, in which the chicken is also marinated in mustard and honey.
We use chicken legs, separated into upper and lower thighs. The meat on the leg copes much better with the relatively long cooking time than breast meat and doesn’t dry out in the process. You can read here how to cut the whole legs at the joint.
First, we prepare the marinade, which will later also serve as a sauce. Wash a large lemon under hot water, peel off a thin layer of zest (just the yellow part, without the bitter white pith) and squeeze out the juice. The other ingredients are olive oil, white wine, water, honey, medium-hot mustard, garlic, thyme, oregano, salt and freshly ground black pepper.
We peel the garlic, then we make things easy for ourselves and purée it all in our little Moulinette, a kitchen appliance we highly recommend. We don’t get anything in return for this; it’s simply a good product and well worth recommending. Finely shredding the zest releases significantly more essential oil than coarsely grating it, making the marinade more intense.
The chicken is left to marinate in this mixture overnight in the fridge. A note on this: when left in contact for such a long time, citric acid begins to cook the surface of the meat slightly, much like in ceviche. This isn’t a problem here, as the chicken is going to be braised for a long time afterwards anyway. However, if the cooking time were shorter, you would limit the marinating time to two to three hours.
The next day, we cut waxy potatoes into large wedges and brown them on all sides in a little olive oil over a medium-high heat in a frying pan. It’s well worth the effort: if you were to put the potatoes in the oven raw, they would end up more like steamed potatoes and remain pale. Some recipes solve this problem by removing the chicken whilst the potatoes continue to roast – but the method described here is easier.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 °C (top and bottom heat).
Place the browned potatoes in an ovenproof dish…
…spread the marinated chicken over it…
…and pour the whole marinade over it. Then seal the dish tightly with aluminium foil.
Bake it like this for 45 minutes in the preheated oven. Cooking it covered ensures that the flavours of the chicken, potatoes and sauce blend together without too much liquid evaporating. The chicken is now almost cooked through, but still pale.
Remove the foil, increase the temperature to 220 °C and continue cooking using the fan setting until the chicken is nicely browned and the sauce has reduced slightly – in our case, about 30 minutes. Every 10 minutes, we take the dish out of the oven briefly and pour some sauce over the chicken.
That’s all there is to it. It takes a while, but it doesn’t require much effort. Always serve with a few spoonfuls of the delicious sauce.
Enjoy.
And may the taste be with you.
Ingredients (for 4 people):
For the chicken:
1.2–1.4 kg chicken legs (cut into upper and lower legs)
1 large lemon (juice and zest)
40 ml olive oil
100 ml white wine
100 ml water
50 g honey
50 g medium-hot mustard
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp thyme
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper (approx. 8 turns of the mill)
For the potatoes:
1.2 kg waxy potatoes, cut into wedges
Olive oil for frying
