The One-Pan Chicken Recipe You Need RN

Chicken for dinner? To quote Miranda Priestly's snide remark in "The Devil Wears Prada": groundbreaking.

But One-Pan Chicken with Lemon and Potatoes? Now that's a mid-week lifesaver that will immediately earn repeat status in your repertoire of go-to dishes.

It genuinely uses one pan—your 5.5QT Hybrid Deep Sauté Pan, to be specific—rather than promising minimal cleanup and then quietly demanding every dish in the kitchen. And while chicken and potatoes might feel familiar, lemons shift the whole dish towards an unexpected elegance that means this can play as both a family dinner or a dinner party main. Lemons lend brightness, balance and a Greek-inspired sensibility that feels both fresh and reassuring in the depths of winter. (And who couldn't use a little TLC in the form of a warm, comforting dinner brimming with homey flavors when the temperatures drop?)

It’s hard to overstate how much lemon can do for savory cooking. A squeeze of juice or a quick hit of zest has a way of lifting rich dishes without tipping them into sour territory. That natural compatibility is especially true with chicken.

One-Pan Lemon Chicken and Potatoes takes its cues from classic Greek cooking, translating those flavors into a streamlined, weeknight-friendly format. Everything cooks together in a single pan, starting with a quick sear of the chicken to build flavor. Deglazing with lemon juice and water pulls up all those browned bits, infusing the pan juices with citrus from the very beginning rather than just stirring it in at the end. The potatoes roast underneath, soaking up the chicken juices and lemon as they cook.

Once the chicken is done, the potatoes return to the oven to crisp up, concentrating all that flavor. The final touch is a creamy, garlicky yogurt sauce brightened with, yes, a little more lemon juice. Dolloped on top or served alongside, the sauce is the sleeper element that pulls everything together. (Pro tip: If you love the sauce the first time you try it, double it the next time to use over your next batch of roasted winter veggies, whole fish or your other staple chicken dinners; it's extremely versatile.)

The final dish is one of those rare one-pan dinners that happens to be elegant enough to serve for company, but easy enough to make on a weeknight without thinking twice. In other words, your new BFF.

Need more chicken inspo? Check out our best recipes featuring everybody's favorite bird. You're bound to find some new winner, winner chicken dinners.