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Sticky Lemon Oregano Chicken is a delicious sweet-sour, tangy, herby chicken dinner. It will be on repeat at your house.
Roasted chicken or turkey skin is my guilty pleasure. I have always loved sneaking into the kitchen to pick off the crispiest, brownest pieces of skin before anyone else gets at them, or – horrors! – before some well-meaning cook discards the fatty skin.
I know the food police think we should eat skinless chicken in these vigilant nutritional times, but I don’t care. Chicken cooked with the bone in and the skin on tastes so much better as to be an entirely different experience than the underdressed variety.
This slightly sweet, lemony, herbaceous recipe tastes fabulous — meat, skin and all. And it’s a slight change of pace for chicken without being so weird you only want to eat it once. I’ve been known to make it twice in one week.
How to make Sticky Lemon Oregano Chicken
First, assemble your ingredients. That way you know if you have everything on hand.
I start by going to the back yard and picking a lemon. This is a dwarf Meyer lemon tree I planted in a half-whiskey barrel some years ago. It’s scrawny, but each year it gives me 20 or so lemons, and I am thrilled! (If you don’t have a lemon tree in your yard, get your lemons at the store. No stress.)
Then grab everything you need from the cabinet and refrigerator. For this recipe, we need only a few ingredients:
- chicken thighs with bone in and skin on
- fresh lemon juice
- honey
- olive oil
- garlic
- oregano
- kosher salt
Put chicken in a 13×9-inch baking dish. Mix everything else in a measuring cup, and then pour it over the chicken.
All the marinade/sauce is over the chicken and it’s ready for the oven.
When roasted, the chicken gets deeply burnished. I might have left the pan in a few minutes too long (or maybe not if you don’t mind a little char). I went to check my email (never do that, fellow home cooks…just don’t!). Anyway, I like it this way!
Fear no food! Eat the skin!
Note: I submitted this recipe to the national food magazine “Taste of Home” and they renamed it Oregano-Lemon Chicken and published it in Country Extra in Nov. 2004.
Sticky Lemon-Oregano Chicken is a delicious sweet-sour, tangy, herby chicken dinner. It will be on repeat at your house.
Ingredients
- 6-8 meaty chicken thighs (bone-in, skin left on), about 2-3 pounds
- .
- Marinade
- 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed, grated or finely minced
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- .
- Pinch of kosher salt
Directions
- Heat oven to 375F degrees. Mist a roasting pan or 13- by 9-inch baking dish with non-stick spray.
- Prepare the chicken: Using a poultry/food shears or knife, snip off and discard any big fat globs, leaving skin intact. Place chicken in pan.
- Make the marinade: In a small bowl or 1 cup measuring cup, stir all marinade ingredients together (lemon, honey, olive oil, garlic, oregano) and pour over chicken. Use all the marinade, don't hold any back. Sprinkle chicken with a pinch of kosher salt. Place pan in oven and roast chicken, uncovered, for a total of 45 minutes, basting with the accumulated juices once, at the halfway point. (If you don't have a baster, you can use a soup spoon by removing the hot pan from the oven, tilting it slightly, and collecting some accumulated juice to spoon over the chicken; return hot pan to the oven to finish the rest of the roasting time.)
- Remove chicken from oven, let rest for a couple of minutes and serve, spooning the pan juices over top of each thigh. See directions below if you'd like to turn the pan juices into a thicker "lemony gravy."
- Serves 6.
Notes
Recipe source: Dorothy Reinhold | Shockingly Delicious
Make quick gravy: If you like thicker juices or you want to create a sort of quickie gravy, pour the pan juices into a small saucepan (you’ll have about 1 cup-ish, depending on how much chicken you used and how much fat rendered out from it). In a small bowl, put 2 tablespoons of the chicken pan juices, and stir in 1 tablespoon cornstarch, until well blended into a slurry. Stir this slurry back into the pan juices in the saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture boils; it will thicken as it reaches the boiling point. Boil 1 minute. Remove from heat and spoon newly thickened sauce over chicken and serve.
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Reader photo of Sticky Lemon Oregano Chicken
My former newspaper colleague Lori Valesko makes this recipe all the time, and snapped this photo of it ⇑. I want to dig right in! She says, “I doubled the lemon juice and used some arrowroot to make the gravy and it was a HIT with the fam! Paired it with mashed potatoes, (more surface area for the gravy), and green beans for the win. Thanks for saving my butt again.” You’re welcome, Lori. I just wrote “chicken thighs” on my shopping list.
Want another great lemony chicken thigh recipe?
Roast Chicken Thighs with Meyer Lemon and Smoked Paprika
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This recipe for Sticky Lemon Oregano Chicken was originally published June 9, 2010 and has been refreshed and republished today.
This post may contain affiliate/referral links. It is a way for this site to earn advertising fees (at no cost to you) by advertising or linking to certain products and/or services that I approve and prefer.
Welcome to my kitchen!
At ShockD, you’ll find scrumptious, tried & true, "scary good" recipes, tips and coaching to make YOU a fabulous home cook! Don't blame me if you need a 12-step program to wean yourself away!
E-mail me: Dorothy.Reinhold@gmail.com
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Totally drooling over this chicken
I love the description of sweet-sour, tangy, herby chicken! This is something that my family and I will love!
I always dry tons of oregano from my garden, so this is a perfect recipe to have on hand to use it!
The lemon + oregano combo is amazing!
Cathy,
Thanks! I totally agree, and I think we should use it in something else, too, like pasta!
The honey paired with the lemon juice sounds fabulous!
Heather,
Yeah, the sweet-sour of it all is very appealing!
A new favorite dinner at my house!! This is so good!
I love how crispy and flavorful this chicken is!
Delicious idea for chicken thighs! I need to make it soon!
I know for sure this Lemon Oregano Chicken would be a huge hit in my house!
My family and I could not get enough of this meal!
This is so yummy! I love this recipe! My family loves it too!
Beth,
I am so glad to hear that! Thanks for letting me know.
This sounds just wonderful. Not liking thighs I will use breasts and cut them in half. Does that sound like it will work OK
Doodles,
Sure, that should be fine. Watch your cooking time though, because breasts cook faster than thighs, and can dry out.
Made this recipe last night and loved it! Only my skin didn’t get quite as crispy as yours looked – wondering where I might have gone wrong? Do you think my oven needed to be higher than 375 or should I have left it in a bit longer than the 45 minutes?
Thanks!
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer,
Hmmm…I can think of two things.
1. In some ovens, the temperature can vary by 25 degrees in either direction. Apparently that is the accepted tolerance from oven manufacturers! That’s why I always keep a separate thermometer in my oven, so I can verify that it is the temp it should be. So perhaps your oven runs on the -25 degree side naturally?
2. I usually keep my top oven rack in the top third of the oven, so perhaps that places my chicken nearer the heating element (electric oven, so a coil at the top). Just musing about that.
If you need a crispier skin (oh yesssss!), why don’t you pop the pan under the broiler for a minute or three at the end of the cooking time, and see if that solves your problem? Stand there and watch it, though. Don’t walk away while it is broiling, or you might burn it. Let me know if that works!
Has a last minute crowd for dinner tonight and tried this recipe. So easy and SO FABULOUS!!! Thank you, thank you!!
This recipe is right up my alley. Few ingredients, citrus flavor, simple but looks like a lot of flavor. Skin, ya gotta love it.
Well, you had me at ‘skin’. I made this for dinner last night and we LOVED it! The recipe is now in my ‘keeper’ file and your blog is in my RSS feed – thanks! Lori 🙂
Ok, LOVE your new website Dorothy!!!
You know how I’ve always loved to cook and now I can benefit from some tried, true, delicious recipes from my cousin who is handing me recipes I already know are great (don’t need to “see how it will come out”).
Friday night, I made the lemon-oregano chicken for 8. Kids and adults alike LOVED it.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart – I am now checking daily so I no longer have to think about what to make, which for me is a blessing!
Love from the Virginia fans!
Dorothy! I LOVE that you’re not afraid of the skin; neither am I. This recipe actually reminds me of my tequila-lime recipe, which in addition to using skin – incorporates a layer of garlic and shallot goodness under the skin. Mr. RGBistro approves, anyway. 😉 [K]
Kim, your chicken sounds fabulous!
I’m salivating …
OH yeah, Jodie. This one is a MUST! Falling-off-a-log easy.
You had me at sticky chicken! But then you admitted your love of skin and I knew this was going to be bookmarked. How do you feel about Arctic Char skin? GREG
Greg,
I just looked up Arctic Char, to make sure I knew what it was. Since I love salmon and trout, I would LOVE Arctic Char skin. It is described as “leathery,” which suits me just fine. Something to chew on. When I have the chance, I will ALWAYS order the salmon skin salad at the sushi bar.