My simple take on the classic French 40 Clove Garlic Chicken will change how you think about short ingredient lists forever. This stunning chicken dish only has six ingredients, and that's including the salt, pepper, and oil using to cook it!
Garlic haters and vampires, this dish is NOT for you. People who say things like "I love XYZ food but hate how it makes me smell", please move along.
This dish is for the people who LOVE garlic. Who don't care if they and their house smells like garlic. Who are 100% down with garlic confit, roasted garlic heads, and garlic bread with extra garlic.
If you've ever spread a few cloves of roasted garlic on a fresh baguette and thought, "This is heaven to me", then this 40 clove garlic chicken recipe is for you.
Garlic, Chicken, and Thyme - the stars for this 40 Clove Garlic Chicken Recipe
That's pretty much all you need to make this. Brown the chicken, Then season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and let it all roast down into a delicious, tender, fragrant, fall-of-the-bone delight.
When it's hot out of the oven, serve it over some sort of starch that will appreciate the pools of garlicky olive oil and melted chicken fat at the bottom of the pot. Mashed potatoes, yes. Rice, yes. Pasta, yes. Crusty French bread? Yes, yes, yes!
If you have leftovers, a little of this garlic chicken sliced up really elevates your favorite salad or sandwich.
I highly recommend this French-style whole chicken recipe for entertaining as well. It feels so FANCY, but leaves you free to entertain your guests.
If you like this 40 Clove Garlic Chicken Recipe, you might also like these:
📖 Recipe
40 Clove Garlic Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 3 to 4 lb chicken cut into 8 pieces
- 40 cloves peeled garlic
- 10 sprigs thyme I have lemon thyme growing in my garden and usually use that for this recipe
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons pepper
- ½ cup olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- Coat the bottom of a large dutch oven set over medium high heat with olive oil ( approximately two tablespoons ).
- Pat the chicken pieces dry, and sprinkle the salt and pepper over the them. Place each piece skin-side down in the hot oil in the dutch oven.
- Once the skin-side of the chicken pieces are brown and crispy, remove the dutch oven from heat. Place the garlic cloves and thyme on top of the chicken. It's fine if not everything is directly on top of chicken pieces. Some of it in inevitably going to fall onto the pan.
- Drizzle the remaining olive oil over everything, place the lid on the dutch oven, and bake at 350°F for 1 ½ hours.
Notes
I updated this recipe in March of 2021. Previously, it only had one photo! I've preserved that photo for you below so that you can compare the old and new. Notice that 10 years later, I am still using the same green dutch oven!
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Christine says
Question: in the photos, it looks like you turned the chicken pieces over skin-side-up before roasting; is that correct?