Baked chicken with amazingly tasty potato wedges

Chicken baked with potato wedges in oven is very popular in Russia and the CIS. I’ve tried a lot of homemade chicken and potatoes as a guest – even when the chicken was close to mine, potatoes was very far. It’s all about the trick – pouring chicken juices over chicken and potatoes. Yes, it will take more time than just baking. But it is worth every minute that will be spent. You will need ~2 hours for everything.

This is a modified version of my grandmother’s recipe. When she was taking freshly baked chicken out of the oven, in 15 minutes (when the dish became less hot) I appeared in the kitchen. And ~half of potatoes and all the skin from chicken pieces disappeared. I don’t know why, but usually nobody detected me by eating, so peeled chicken was always a surprise for my relatives.

Ingredients for 1 baking sheet:

• plucked and gutted chicken (~1,5 kg), also you may buy your favorite chicken parts as chicken breast usually is a bit dry
• 1,5 kg of potatoes
• 1,5+0,5 tsp of salt
• 4 cloves of garlic
• Parchment paper for baking (it should be of good quality and at least 38 cm wide to cover the sheet and its walls)

Without parchment paper you will wash the sheet as long as it is usually shown in detergent ads. If the paper won’t be torn during baking process, you have a chance even to avoid washing the baking sheet.

Instructions

1. Cover baking sheet and its walls with parchment paper.

2.Wash and peel potatoes.

3. Cut chicken in pieces. Now you need to put some salt (~1,5 tsp) under the skin (if you sprinkle salt over the skin, you will get spoiled skin and unsalted meat). Put chicken parts on baking sheet.

4. While the oven is preheating to 200°C in convection mode, cut potatoes in wedges. Put wedges around pieces of chicken. Sprinkle 0,5 tsp of salt over potato wedges.

5. Put chicken with potatoes in the oven and bake 20 min.

6. Take baking tray out (do not switch off the oven!), put 2 wedges away from the corner of tray, lean the tray direction free corner – juice and fat will start to flow there. Take it with a tablespoon and pour over every chicken piece and every potato wedge. Don’t miss any of them! Put 2 wedges back on their place and return baking sheet in the oven. Bake 15 min.

7. Take out the baking sheet and pour potatoes and chicken with juices one more time. If potato wedges are too brown, flip them over or change with those in the middle. Bake the dish another 10 min.

8. Repeat step 7. The amount of liquid fat has reduced, be patiently and wait until it flows.

9. Repeat step 7 one more time. There’s almost no liquid fat but still enough to cover chicken pieces. Pour juices only over chicken pieces.

10. While the dish is in the oven, peel the garlic and prepare garlic press or mince the garlic with knife. Now everything depends on your oven: if the dish looks almost like at the first picture, go forward to step 11. If it looks undercooked – repeat step 7.

11. Take out the baking sheet, press the garlic and spread it over chicken. If there’s too much garlic, you can spread it over potatoes too. Bake 5 min.

If you would like to store some pieces chicken in a fridge, I would recommend you to eat all the chicken skin in advance, while it is still warm and slightly crispy. Otherwise it won’t be so tasty. You can try to warm it up the next day in the oven but the garlic may burn down.