One-Pan Chicken Thighs With Burst Tomatoes, Harissa, and Feta
Quick-cooking, budget-friendly, and pretty hard to screw up (that dark meat is automatically juicier), chicken thighs are our default weeknight dinner—and this is our simplest recipe yet. It's made in a single pan in less than 45 minutes—and you don't even have to chop a vegetable. What's the shortcut? Harissa, a North African pepper-based hot sauce that's spicy, fruity, bright, and smoky—it brings the flavor so that you don't have to. While you can always make your own harissa, buying a jar at the grocery store is always a good option. Look for brands that list peppers as the first ingredient (sometimes they can be cut with tomato product, and that's not what you want) and taste it before you add it to the skillet: Different brands vary in spiciness, so you may have to go up or down in quantity depending.
Servings: 3
Ingredients
- 6 skin-on bone-in chicken thighs about 2¼ pounds total
- 3 teaspoons kosher salt divided
- 1½ pounds cherry tomatoes any color
- ¼ cup harissa paste or ½ cup of harissa sauce
- 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 3 sprigs oregano divided
- 4 ounces feta
- crusty bread for serving
Instructions
Prepare the chicken:
- Pat chicken thighs dry with paper towels. This will help the skin get nice and brown.
- Season the chicken thighs all over with 2½ teaspoons of kosher salt. (When you're seasoning meat, a good rule of thumb is 1 tsp. salt per pound.)
Brown the chicken:
- Place the chicken (skin side down) in a dry large cast-iron skillet with the heat off.
- Heat over medium and cook the chicken, undisturbed, until the skin is very crisp and deeply golden brown and releases from the pan (an indication that the skin is brown and crackly), 13–16 minutes. You have permission to rotate the pan (but not the chicken) from time to time to encourage all thighs to get equal love from the burner. And just like starting fish skin side down in a room temp pan guarantees crackly, bronzed skin, doing the same with chicken renders the fat slowly—and that means even browning and the crispiest skin imaginable.
- Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a plate. Make sure to keep it skin side up: Placing that crispy skin against the plate will cause it to steam and sog, negating all of your hard work.
Cook the tomatoes:
- Add the cherry tomatoes, harissa paste, red wine vinegar, 1 oregano sprig and the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt to the pan.
- Increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have burst and released all of their juices, and the juices have started to thicken, 8–10 minutes.
Finish cooking the chicken:
- Nestle the chicken thighs back into the skillet (keep the skin side up) over the tomatoes.
- Reduce the heat to medium-low, bring to a simmer, and cook until the chicken is just cooked through and the flesh is no longer pink (an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part near the bone will register 165°), and the tomato sauce has thickened and a wooden spoon leaves a trail when dragged through, 6–8 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and let sit for 5 minutes—this gives the meat an opportunity to reabsorb the moisture that moved to the surface while it cooked. Sounds technical, but it means your chicken will be tender and juicy.
Finish and serve:
- While the chicken cooks, cut feta into ¼"-thick planks.
- Once the chicken has rested for 5 minutes, break the feta planks into large pieces, scattering over the skillet. Some pieces will stay intact while others will soften into the sauce a little—and that's exactly what you want.
- Pick the leaves off of the remaining 2 oregano sprigs and scatter over the chicken and tomatoes.
- Serve with torn crusty bread for sopping up any extra tomato sauce.
Notes
Useful user suggestions:
- I find my chicken doesn’t always cook through on the stovetop. I baked the chicken at 400 in the oven while the tomatoes were starting and everything came together at the same time.
- Substituted sriracha sauce for the harissa, added a tablespoon of tomato paste, and three shakes of smoked paprika, and finished it in the oven at 350 until the thighs were done.
- I used 1/2 cup of the harissa sauce, which comes in a square glass container.
- Served the dish alongside crispy smashed potatoes.