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Wine-braised chicken, grapes, capers, lemon and parsley

This winner of a chicken dinner is perfect for a dinner party! Wine-braised chicken with the delicious flavours of grape, caper, lemon and parsley – I’m salivating thinking about it!
Cook Time 40 minutes
Course Lunch, Main
Servings 6
Dairy Free, Diabetic, Gluten Free

Ingredients
  

  • olive oil for cooking
  • 1.5 kg chicken thighs bone in, skin on, at room temperature
  • small onions eg pickling onions 4-6
  • dry white wine eg riesling or verjuice or grape juice 1 cup
  • 1 cup chicken stock*
  • 1 tablespoon capers
  • 1 lemon zest
  • ½ lemon juice
  • grapes red or white 200 grams, left on stems
  • 1-2 tablespoons parsley finely chopped

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 180°C.
  • Heat a good drizzle of olive oil in a large frying pan on medium heat. Pat chicken pieces dry with paper towels and season with salt. Brown chicken, skin-side down, in batches until a lovely golden brown (but do not cook all the way through). Set aside in a roasting dish.
  • While chicken is browning, top and tail onions, cut in half and remove skins. When all chicken is in roasting dish, add onions to frying pan, cut-side-down, and cook in the chicken fat for 1-2 minutes, until browned. Transfer to roasting dish.
  • Add wine to frying pan and allow to bubble for a few minutes while you use a wooden spoon to stir and rub brownings from the bottom of the pan, releasing them into the liquid. Add any juices from the resting chicken back to the pan.
  • Add stock, capers, lemon zest and juice. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring often, until sauce has slightly reduced.
  • Pour sauce into roasting dish but avoid wetting the chicken skin (this way the skin will be nice and crisp when cooked). Top with grape clusters and roast in oven for 40 minutes or so, until chicken is tender and meat comes away from the bone easily. (Alternatively, if you have a large ovenproof frying pan, you could do both the frying and roasting in one pan.)
  • Garnish with parsley. Serve with creamy garlic and rosemary mash and lemony green beans, or crusty bread and salad.
  • *Check label if eating gluten free.

Notes

We served this as part of our NADIA magazine first birthday celebration. The skin on the chicken goes deliciously crispy – always a crowd-pleaser! The alcohol will cook off the wine during the cooking, so this is fine to serve to kids.