This One-Pan Hen Dinner Is the Definition of a Excessive-Reward Recipe

June 4, 2025

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Why It Works

Roasting olive oil–dressed rooster thighs and asparagus at excessive warmth cooks them rapidly and fantastically, whereas producing a scrumptious sheet-pan filled with drippings that double as a sauce and French dressing.
A second sauce of Greek yogurt and olives provides richness and takes simply seconds to stir collectively.

I’ve been on a mission lately—nicely, extra of a side-quest, if I am being trustworthy—to get extra residence cooks to arrange dishes with two sauces. It is a kind of issues that sounds annoyingly cheffy, but when approached thoughtfully, could be straightforward. I’ve already printed a smashed potato recipe as proof of idea, and I am now including yet one more to the listing. It is a double whammy of cooking effectivity, being each a easy two-sauce recipe and a easy sheet-pan dinner recipe. The outline makes it sound like lots of work, however I swear it is not: roasted rooster thighs with a salad of roasted asparagus and scallions, contemporary uncooked fennel, and a vivid lemon French dressing; an olive-yogurt sauce; and a second sauce of rooster fats drippings. Woof, that is a mouthful. And a scrumptious one, if I do say so myself.

The recipe works so effectively in these methods:

First, it takes benefit of a very popular (450°F) oven to deeply roast each rooster thighs (which get higher and higher with continued cooking) and tender spring asparagus in a comparatively quick period of time. Simply saying it out loud: I need very tender, very gentle roasted asparagus right here, I am not in search of a vivid inexperienced, crisp-tender end result. Embrace the overcooked vegetable! (As a result of they’re scrumptious.)
Whereas that largely hands-off roasting is going on, you possibly can whip up a ridiculously easy olive-yogurt sauce by stirring an olive purée or tapenade into Greek yogurt. That is additionally a very good time to thinly slice a bulb of uncooked fennel for the “salad” element.
The rooster and asparagus are drizzled with olive oil earlier than roasting, and as they do, a scrumptious second sauce kinds on the sheet pan, a mix of olive oil, rendered rooster fats, and juices from the rooster and greens. There’s actually no additional work, and but you get a second sauce that works as each the dressing for the fennel salad (with a bit of additional contemporary olive oil and lemon juice added) and as a gilded, saucy contact on the completed plate.

The salad is enhanced with fennel fronds, that are simply trimmings from the bulb, plus some torn contemporary mint leaves, which add an exquisite freshness with little or no work.

The second sauce is simply the drippings from the roasting pan: Tons of taste, no additional work.

Severe Eats/ Amanda Suarez

This can be a good instance of my concept of a “good” sheet-pan recipe. It takes benefit of roasting all the pieces on a rimmed baking sheet for velocity and ease, whereas maximizing the time (virtually all prep occurs whereas the rooster and asparagus are roasting) and taking advantage of each element, right down to the juices on the baking sheet. The result’s restaurant-worthy, however the work doesn’t require a brigade of cooks and a backup crew of dishwashers. And the 2 sauces half? You may act prefer it’s a flex—it’s going to be our little secret about how little you probably did to realize it.