Slow Roasted Chicken With Chicken Breasts

Our answer

Nigella's Slow Roasted Garlic And Lemon Chicken recipe (from Nigella Summer and on the Nigella website) is a traybake, where all of the ingredients are roasted together in one pan. Nigella uses a jointed chicken for the dish. This is quite important as the meat has the skin on and is still on the bone. During the slow cooking process these help to keep the chicken flesh moist and the fat from the skin renders out slowly, helping to baste the whole garlic cloves and slices of lemon.

Unfortunately if you make this dish with skinless chicken breasts (that we assume are also boneless) then it will be very dry. Chicken breasts are best cooked quickly or with plenty of liquid, to make sure that they retain moisture. Also the breasts would only take about 30 minutes to cook, which would not be enough time to soften and mellow the garlic and lemon. It would be possible to use chicken thighs (skin on and preferably bone in) in the dish. For chicken breasts we would suggest trying Chicken With Spring Onions, Chilli and Greek Yogurt or Chicken With Tarragon salsa verde (both on the Nigella website), or one of several other chicken breast recipes on the website.