The One Pot Greek Chicken Dinner You Can Make Tonight | Make it Wednesday

Hey guys! Welcome to another episode of Make It Wednesday. I love this series. Number one, because I love coming up with solutions for that what am I going to cook for dinner tonight kind of vibe that goes on every day in my head anyway. And two, because I typically like to watch these episodes as they go live so that I can chat to you in the comments below. So if you are watching now, please do say hello in the comments. Tell me where you're watching from. What are you doing? Are you having a glass of wine? Are you having a coffee? Is it still Tuesday where you are? It very well could be. So I have just returned from the Greek islands. So everything at the moment I'm cooking is Greek. So you know how you get inspired by those things. So we're going to make a one pot Greek style chicken and orzo. So like that kind of like really lovely small pasta shape kind of dish. I do have a few tricks here for getting the maximum amount of flavour in a short amount of time. And one of those tricks is to roast my cherry tomatoes before I actually add them into my sauce. Because you kind of just get an extra layer of umami and flavour that you don't get if you just add in the raw tomato or just crushed tomatoes. So just a little you know a few little extra tips can make life so much more delicious. Now I'm just going to pop these in the oven just while I get my chicken cooking. Just so they blister a little bit. So with the chicken I am using bone-in. Is this bone-in? So bone-in chicken thigh with the skin on. I love this cut because it's typically quite budget-friendly. And you get the benefit of the lovely skin. I'm just laying these out so I can get a really good surface area to do some seasoning. My salt. I have some oregano that I've popped on here as well. Now don't worry I do sometimes I get questions about whether I am touching the chicken and touching everything else. I do wash my hands in between kind of cuts of the video. Why? I don't know it's just because you know if I come over here then you see Julie and the camera. And so we don't always we don't always show it but I am doing it I promise. Another little secret here is that I like to use my lemon zest for the chicken part. And then I'll use the juice a little bit later on for the pasta part. Because of course the more moisture you add the less likely you are to get that beautiful lovely brown golden colour. So that's the reason there's always method to the madness. A little bit of fresh oregano here as well. No that's thyme. A little bit of fresh thyme. I might just add a little bit of grated garlic here as well. And while that's happening I'll get my pan heating up. You really want to choose a pan here which is quite solid that will happily go from stovetop into the oven. I always think with these one-pot dishes it's always great. You can start on a stovetop and get some really nice colour. And then move it into the oven to finish cooking gently. Okay so I'm going to add in some oil here. Now you'll notice in the recipe that I did call for olive oil and not extra virgin. So we can get a little food nerdy here while we're talking on a Wednesday night can't we? So olive oil has a high smoke point. So it is more suitable to searing things and also not as expensive as extra virgin. Extra virgin should be used for finishing off dishes to give it a beautiful flavour. So if you can try to use your olive oil for cooking and your extra virgin for finishing off your dish if that makes sense. Now the idea here is that I just want to get a little bit of colour on my chicken. If you haven't joined me for a Make It Wednesday episode before then the idea here is that I do try to cook mostly in real-time without too much time editing cuts. So that you know exactly how long it's going to take or you actually might want to cook along with me. So that's the whole idea behind this series and there are other episodes you can head on over to watch. There's a playlist on my channel if you want to check it out. Now I know that a lot of my followers do watch this series but if you are new here and you do like this episode why not hit subscribe? Because then you'll always get notified whenever a new Make It Wednesday is released. And let me know if you're a new subscriber. I love to welcome new people to the channel. Okay this chicken's looking good. The other great thing with starting this dish with the chicken is that I'm trying to build up sort of layers of flavour here. So I'm actually getting a lot of really beautiful chickeny kind of juices and also some of that lovely Maillard reaction happening with the fat and the oil and that chicken skin. And this is giving us a really good flavour base for our whole dish. There's nothing like the smell of garlic and oregano. So good. Okay this chicken's looking pretty good. It's just got some nice colour on it. Still needs to be cooked through obviously. Right I'm just going to pull it out. Pop it down here first. Okay we'll leave that for a minute and I want to get a little bit more fresh garlic going here. You can smell those tomatoes in the oven. I wonder if we have anyone from Greece watching. We usually have people watching from all over which I love. So if you are watching from Greece or you're from Greece but you're living elsewhere, I would love to know. This isn't the most traditional dish so apologies in advance. I'm just taking the flavours and being inspired by my Greek holiday to create something for a midweek meal. Now I think one of the things to debate most fiercely about the Greek islands is which Greek island is the best. I know everyone has a different opinion. I went to quite a few so I did love the smaller more quiet islands more so than the more popular ones. But if you have a suggestion for your favourite Greek island, please do let me know below because when I go back, I would love to check it out. I'm sure everyone else would love to hear some recommendations. Just put my garlic back in there and I'm going to check out what's happening with my tomatoes. Oh foggy. Glasses are great because they help with onion chopping. But anytime there's any steam or getting things out of the oven, they are not quite a big help. So you can see the tomatoes here have just blistered and softened a little bit. And also that oil has got a nice little kind of like tomato-y sheen to it. All good flavours. And you can see now, almost immediately, the tomato, as soon as I press down on it, squishes into the most beautiful, lovely oil, garlic-y kind of sauce here. And I just love this extra added dimension of flavour which takes like no time at all. So really good little first step trick there. Now because midweek, I do like to try and be as virtuous as I can with my dinners. I like to add in as much green as I can. So I'm going to add in here some baby spinach, which looks like a lot. It's going to wilt down. Okay, so this is such a great base of flavour here. I am now going to start adding in a few more things and getting some liquid going so I can add in my orzo. So orzo is this kind of pasta shape. It sort of looks like rice. I think it's such an underrated pasta shape. It kind of becomes all glossy and sheeny and almost creamy at the end. It's, yeah. I'm going to add in some chicken stock here. My orzo. A few more sprigs of thyme here. And now I'm going to nestle my chicken back into this mix. Now I'm going to put this into the oven uncovered so I can get more colour on that chicken for 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and that orzo pasta is tender. All right, this is currently smelling amazing. Oh my goodness, look at the colour of that chicken. And that pasta in there is beautifully cooked. Oh, so good. So just to finish this off, I'm going to add some Greek feta cheese and just crumble that all over. And let's finish it off with a little bit of greenery. Some parsley here. And then I said I wasn't going to waste my lemon. So let's use that. And there you go. That is my one pot Greek style chicken with orzo. Wow, so good. Such an easy dinner to make as well. I mean, you know, it does take time in the oven, but literal prep time. So easy. Let me have a look in here. Oh, it smells so good. Smell that tomatoey spinach pasta. And then we go, wow, I just love a one pot. Sheree, do you love a one pot? I do love a one pot. OK, I know you do. And you've got two boys. And I know what it's like. You get home from work and you just want as little dishwashing as possible. And dinner on the table. That flavor is insane. It's so good. Cooking short pasta like this means that it just soaks up all of the tomatoey and the chickeny kind of flavors. Oh, yum. That is amazing. I love it so much. Do you know what I also love? Chatting to you guys on a Wednesday. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this recipe. And if you did, go and check the back catalog. There's so many great things to make on a weeknight. And if you haven't subscribed, please do, because I would love to welcome you to the channel. OK, thanks, guys. See you on another Wednesday. Bye. I just waved to the camera. I know I just waved to the camera. What are those shows? You know, the game shows? Everyone's waving. I'm a wheel of fortune. We need to get some streamers to come down. Keep going, keep going. And cut.