One-Pot Lemon Chicken Orzo
Orzo cooked risotto-style in stock alongside browned chicken thighs, finished with lemon, dill and feta. One pan, forty minutes.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 700
- Calories
- 46g
- Protein
- 30g
- Fat
- 60g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 8 boneless chicken thighs, skin on
- 300 g orzo
- 900 ml chicken stock
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 lemons
- 150 g spinach
- Small bunch dill
- 100 g feta
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 30 g butter
- Salt and black pepper
Instructions
- 1Pat the chicken thighs dry and season both sides well.
- 2Heat the olive oil in a wide, deep, oven-safe pan over medium-high. Put the thighs in skin-side down and cook for 7 minutes without moving them, until the skin is deep golden and releases from the pan on its own.
- 3Turn and cook for 2 minutes more, then lift them onto a plate. Pour off all but 2 tbsp of the fat.
- 4Finely dice the onion and mince the garlic. Cook the onion in the reserved fat over medium heat for 6 minutes, until soft, then add the garlic for 1 minute.
- 5Add the orzo and stir for 2 minutes so every grain is coated in fat and lightly toasted. This keeps it from going gluey later, the same way toasting risotto rice does.
- 6Pour in the stock and the zest of both lemons, and bring to a simmer.
- 7Nestle the chicken back in skin-side up, so the skin stays above the liquid and does not go soft.
- 8Simmer uncovered for 12 to 14 minutes, stirring the orzo around the chicken occasionally, until the pasta is tender and most of the stock has been absorbed. Stirring is what makes the sauce creamy.
- 9Add the spinach in handfuls and fold it through until wilted.
- 10Take off the heat. Stir in the butter, the juice of both lemons and most of the chopped dill. Taste and season.
- 11Crumble the feta over, scatter the rest of the dill, and serve from the pan.
Orzo looks like rice and behaves like pasta, and the useful trick is that it can be cooked like risotto — directly in stock, in one pan, releasing starch as it goes.
Cook it in the stock, not in water
Boiling orzo separately and draining it throws away the starch, and the starch is what makes this dish creamy without cream.
Cooked in just enough stock, stirred occasionally, it thickens its own sauce. The stock also gets absorbed into the pasta rather than tipped down the sink, so the seasoning is inside each grain instead of coating it.
The ratio matters: roughly three parts liquid to one part orzo by weight. Too much and it stays soupy; too little and it catches on the base.
Toast it first
Two minutes of stirring dry orzo in fat before the liquid arrives coats each piece and gives a faint nuttiness. It also slows how fast the outside breaks down, which is the difference between distinct grains and a starchy mass.
Keep the skin above the liquid
Crisping chicken skin takes seven undisturbed minutes and it is undone in about ninety seconds of submersion.
Nestling the thighs skin-side up so the skin sits proud of the simmering orzo keeps it intact. It will soften a little from steam, which is unavoidable, but it stays worth having.
Lemon twice, both at the end
Zest goes in with the stock, where its oils can infuse through the whole cooking time. Juice goes in off the heat, because simmering lemon juice turns its brightness into a dull sourness.
Two lemons for four people sounds like a lot. It is a lemon chicken orzo, and the acidity is what stops a pan of starch, fat and feta reading as heavy.
Dill, and the alternatives
Dill is the Greek choice here and its slight aniseed note works particularly well with lemon and feta. Parsley is a reasonable substitute. Dried dill is not — it loses almost everything in drying.
Nutrition
Around 700 calories a serving with 46 grams of protein, which makes this a complete meal from one pan. The spinach adds iron and vitamin K, and the lemon's vitamin C improves how much of that plant iron your body takes up.
Using skinless thighs cuts about 8 grams of fat per serving. It reheats well with a splash of stock, though the orzo will have drunk most of the sauce by then.
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