Spanish Chicken With Chorizo Using Chicken Breast

Our answer

Many of Nigella's traybake recipes, including Spanish Chicken With Chorizo And Potatoes (from Kitchen and on the Nigella website), use chicken thighs. This is partly as the traybakes often have around an hour cooking time and thighs tend to stay moister than chicken breasts with the longer cooking times. The fat from the thighs will help to moisten and flavour the other ingredients in the traybake. Also many people think that chicken thighs have more flavour than breasts and the thighs are usually a more modest price.

If you were to use breasts then we would not use skinless, boneless breasts as these will dry out very quickly. You could use breasts on the bone but these would need to be watched carefully and removed and kept warm once they are cooked through. Also you may need to add a little extra oil to the potatoes. However yu may like to use boneless but skin-on thighs - it is usually fairly easy to remove the thigh bone by running a sharp knife down either side if the bone and lifting it out. Chicken drumsticks could also be used and these are usually very popular with children. Both of these options will cook more quickly than the thighs in the recipe so will need to be taken out once the chicken is cooked (about 30 minutes - check the juices are running clear) and left in a warm place, covered with foil, until the rest of the traybake has finished cooking.