Tarragon Chicken Thighs

Our answer

Nigella's Tarragon Chicken (from KITCHEN) is a good recipe for skinless, boneless chicken breasts as it part pan fries and part poaches the chicken, which prevents the lean chicken breasts from becoming dry. The flavour of the tarragon-laced sauce is quite robust so we do think that chicken thighs could be used instead.

If you have thighs that have the bone in then cook them as you would the breasts, just make sure that they are cooked all of the way through before removing them from the pan and making the sauce. The cooking time should be similar but you may need to allow for 15 minutes of poaching time instead of 10 minutes. It is up to you whether you leave the skin on or not, but as it won't crisp up with this cooking method and will let out a fair amount of fat, we would, on balance, remove the skin. If you have skinless, boneless thigh fillets then these are thinner than chicken breasts and will cook more quickly. Boneless thighs tend to have uneven thickness so may be easier to make them into escalopes, as described in the introduction, instead. The cooking time will likely be shorter, so check after 5-6 minutes of poaching and then check every minute or two until the thighs are cooked though. You may need to simmer any liquid left in the pan to reduce it slighty, before adding the cream.