Lebanon: Djej w Batata Bil Sayniyyeh : Baked Garlic Chicken and Potatoes

CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE I USED

This should be called Baked Lemon Garlic Chicken with Potatoes because lemon adds a lot of flavor to this dish. Almost too much for me, to be honest. Not this was a bad meal, I just found the lemon on the edge of being too much and thought it overshadowed the garlic. When you peel 20 cloves of garlic for a dish, you want it to be the star of that dish. It is still present but the lemon presence was stronger.

The Good: This is tasty and it led me to discovering Lebanese 7-Spice seasoning which is delicious! The cooking portion of the recipe is just cooking chicken and potatoes in the oven so that part is easy. There's also room to tinker with the amount of lemon, garlic, and seasoning to cater toward personal preferences.

The Bad: There is definitely some prep work that you need to make time for. Peeling 20 cloves of garlic took some time and a lot of washing of my hands afterward because garlic smells delicious in food but I don't want my hands to be able to repel vampires from a mile away. (Though if vampires were real that would probably be a good thing.) There's some peeling and slicing of potatoes. I used Yukon Gold potatoes here and they worked great! There are also lemons to be juiced and I probably should have used less than the one cup of lemon juice this recipe calls for. Or upped the amount of garlic to 35 cloves. Or both.

I partially cooked the potatoes in the air fryer before adding them to the pan with the chicken. I wanted to make sure they were cooked through and wasn't confident that the cook time for thighs would be adequate. They were just right so I recommend doing that!

Would I make this again? Yes, but with modifications.

Less lemon, more garlic. More Lebanese 7-Spice seasoning than this recipe calls for because it adds so much flavor. I used bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (they were a good price a the store) but would remove the skin or use boneless skinless thighs next time. The skin doesn't crisp up and doesn't really add anything to the dish.