Recipe by Julia Turshen

Celebration Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Dates

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Meat Meat
Easy Easy
8 Servings
Allergens

No Allergens specified

1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Diets

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the Jewish New Year. There are a lot of symbolic foods associated with the holiday, most of them sweet to help usher in a sweet new year. This chicken is a bit of a Rosh Hashanah riff on the famous Chicken Marbella from The Silver Palate Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. Just like that extremely popular recipe, this chicken doesn’t require much work and yields a crowd-pleasing, highly flavorful result. It calls for just one roasting pan, in which you both mix everything and cook. There are no extra bowls or pans, no browning chicken in batches, and definitely no fuss. You also get a two-for-one moment: the sweet potatoes and dates (sweet for Rosh Hashanah!) give you an instant side dish.

Ingredients

Celebration Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Dates

  • 2 (3- to 4-lb./1.4- to 1.8- kg.) chickens, each cut into 10 pieces, at room temperature

  • 3 large sweet potatoes, about 2 pounds (910 grams) total, unpeeled, scrubbed and cut into bite-size pieces

  • 12 large dried dates (preferably Medjool), halved and pitted

  • a small handful of chopped fresh soft herbs (cilantro, parsley, dill, and/or chives all work well)

Directions

Prepare the Celebration Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Dates

1.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (220 degrees Celsius).

2.

In a large roasting pan, whisk together the vinegar, olive oil, water, garlic, salt and pepper (you want a pan that’s big enough to hold all of the chicken pieces in a single layer; a disposable aluminum pan is good for this if your roasting pan isn’t large enough). Add the chicken pieces, sweet potatoes, and dates. Use your hands to mix everything together and get the marinade on all of chicken, sweet potatoes, and dates. Warning: the following is a bit messy, but bear with me. Move everything around so the sweet potatoes and dates are in a single layer on the bottom of the pan and the chicken pieces, skin-side up, are in a single layer on top.

3.

Roast until the sweet potatoes are tender (test with a fork or a paring knife) and the chicken pieces are firm to the touch and their exposed skin is nicely browned, about one hour. Let the chicken rest at room temperature for at least 15 minutes before serving.

4.

To serve, transfer the chicken, sweet potatoes, and dates to a large serving platter and pour all of the cooking juices over the top (or serve directly from the roasting pan, giving everything a little mix first). Sprinkle with the herbs and serve warm.

Credits

Recipe excerpted from Now & Again (Chronicle Books, 2018) with kind permission of the publisher.

Celebration Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Dates

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Jenna Nelson
Jenna Nelson
3 years ago

About how long does this chicken cook?