Easy Cast Iron Skillet Chicken Thighs & Seared Vegetables Meal | Makin' It! | Brad Leone

Hey guys, welcome back to Making It. Today we're going to be making a fun little weeknight dinner. Takes about an hour. We're going to be doing it in the Glasney Pizza Oven, except we're not going to be making pizza. We're going to be making a nice little chicken, coconut milk, braised with some veggies. Really nice little simple dinner comes together. I like to do a nice little quick one hour weeknight dinner. Or a weekend. Or a holiday. I don't care. Any day. So here we go. We got the ingredients right, baby. Alright? Let's pay a little respect. We got some chicken thighs, bone in, salted them about a day ahead. Nice, get them that nice and, you know, it's going to allow that seasoning to penetrate down to the bone. And I just always recommend seasoning your meat ahead of time if you can. We have some beautiful garlic. This year's harvest on the Leone farm here. Medicinal grade. Bell pepper. Little ugly guy, but it's delicious. I'll eat this thing like an apple. I love green bell peppers. And I got a bunch of them in the garden, so we're going to use them. Same with some leeks. I cleaned them up, grew them this year. They grow great. If you got some land, some good soil, doesn't take much. Grow some leeks. It's wonderful. Even some corn. I picked a couple of little baby corns that we're going to chop up and put right into our dish. It's going to be wonderful. And some red potatoes. And some tomatoes. All right, we got some really nice sun golds and these little high bread ones that are really awesome. They look beautiful, although they're not as sweet as you'd like them to be. But hey, that's life, man. Just some cherry tomatoes we'll add in there for a little substance. Coconut cream. Nice. And I got some water. We're probably going to need a little bit more. We'll see how it goes. Oh, almost forgot. Little slightly dried, this beautiful dill plant. Look at these dill seeds. Little florets. All right. Different stages of the reproduction. Oh, it smells so good. I think that's going to go really great with the leeks and the coconut and the chicken and the garlic. And it's just a beautiful thing. And we're going to head out to the pizza oven. We're going to sear them off in some pork fat. Then we're going to add our veg. Beautiful. All right, before we do all that, set ourself up for success. All right, leeks. Let's start with that. All right. Compost. And we've got the greens. We're going to use a little bit of both. All of the whites. And I'm just going to cut some rounds. And the greens. I love the greens. All right. Big flavor. Nice onion-y, leek-y. Can't beat a good leek. And again, from the garden. All right. Let's give it up for the leeks. Give these to the ducks. Maybe they'll nibble on them. All right. So we've got our leeks. Let's get those in the bowl. Couple ears of these baby corns. I'm just going to cut them into fun little slices. The kids love them. I love them. Who doesn't love a little baby corn? Fun, fun, fun. Little chunkers. Bell pepper. I'm going to nip the top right off because I'm like that. Boom. Bang the seeds out. Mmm. People hate on green bell peppers. They're so good. Hey. To each their own. More for me and Uncle Ian. Same with this potato. We want it to cook kind of quick. We're going to do like quarter-inch, eighth-inch little half-moons. Okay? All right. Fresh. All right. I nipped the little woody bits off. Then we give it the little CPR crush. The little break the rib cage crush. All right? This stuff, full of polyphenols. Burn your fingers. Burn your hand. Burn the viruses right out of your gut. Oh, thank God. Yeah. We got our veg all chopped up, ready to go. We got our liquids, our coconut fat, our coconut cream, and some water. We got our chicken. We got our veg. We got our cast iron and the gosling out there. Let's go get that going. Sear our chicken. Add our mirepoix, our veg, and then we'll add the liquid. Cover it. Simmer, simmer, simmer. Yum. All right. Grab your stuff. Let's go, Ian. I forgot to mention we're going to add some tomatoes in there with our liquid and our veg too. We're going to do some whole ones. A little mixed medley. Some sun golds, some orange bombers, some red delights. That's perfect. A little acid. A little nice. A little summer. All right. Let's go. And we're moving. What we're going to do first in any good braise of meat is you got to put a little sear on it. All right. So I got a really nice cast iron in here. Ripping hot. And we're just going to add a little bit of pork fat. And this is just a rendered mangalista pork fat. You could use olive oil or I just love animal fat. Kind of hard to beat. We got a nice bone in, skin on chicken breast. We're going to let that skin side down sear for a little bit. Pop it in the oven. Let that get a nice little char on the bottom. We'll flip it. Add the veg. Let them sweat a little bit. Nice, nice. Cover it. Back in the oven. Everyone's happy with this. You kidding me? But I like using a little work glove. All right. Easy access. Side towel works fine, but I got a little work glove. All right. And look at that. We're getting a nice sear on there. All the, that's the beauty of cooking outside. I love using the Gosling pizza oven. More than just the pizza oven. Throw the cast iron in there. Get a good sear. I'm doing chicken thighs. You can do this with pork, steak, whatever. And we're outside. You don't have to stink up your whole house. Beautiful thing. Let's give it a little look-see. Oh, look at that. Getting there. Beautiful sear. Those are going to go back in the oven now. We're going to hit our veg. Oh, that looks beautiful. A little dab will do you. Pop that chicken face in the heat. Pop that back in there. Get a little more color on the skin. Let those vegetables kind of sweat. Get a little, even a little char on them. All right. What I love about this, the new Gosling, the ARC XL, which is the unit we're cooking in. They move the flame over to the side and you get that beautiful rolling heat over the top. And a nice surface area to cook in. Lightweight. Weighs about 50 pounds. It's, it's, it's, it's my favorite outdoor oven to cook on. That's for God dang sure. Oh yeah. So we've got a nice vegetable start to sweat. Even the tomato started to burst a little, a little bit of char. Nice little rendering on the skin. We're going to add our liquid. Let's add the fat first. All right. Scoot over chicken. Let's make a little reservoir. And there it is. One can of coconut cream. Get that mixing around real nice. Everybody's going to get happy. We're going to start with one cup of water. We're going to start with two cups of water. I'm just going to give the bottom a little scrapey, little nice. This is going to reduce. I'm going to cover it with a little foil and then we're going to come back to her and give it a blast of heat when it's done. But we're going to let it cook covered in this liquid. Allow it to braise. Put this oven on low and we're going to keep an eye on it. Let all those flavors get real nice. We'll hit it with some fresh herbs at the end. Good, good, good, good. Let me get the foil. Nice. Nice and tight, Brad. I don't want to fall off. Take your time. Do a nice little wrap job. I'm going to pop that back. All right. Love that. Let that go. We've got a nice little oven thing going. We're going to let that cook covered and at the end we're going to take it out, remove the foil, give it a little blast if we need be. If we think it's a good idea at the time. But I think it will be. And then we'll have dinner. Bonnie girl. Come here, baby. So total cook time. This is looking nice. About 45 minutes. 50 minutes. Total. Start to finish. That looks gorgeous. All right. We've got a nice sauce built up. Nice little potato chip skin. Let's bring it inside. It's getting hot. Hot, hot, hot, hot. All right. So we had our chicken thighs in the cast iron. All right. That we seared ahead of time. We had the veg in there. Cooked nice. And then we added our liquid, that coconut milk. That's going to give it that creamy richness. Really awesome flavor. Mixed in with that pork fat and that rendered chicken fat. All right. We have that baby corn and tomatoes and herbs. Delicious. All right. So this would be great. And then we took the foil off. After about 20 minutes of the simmer, we took the foil off. Let it reduce more. Let that skin get real nice and crispy. And again, that sauce just kind of has this beautiful, creamy, little emulsified goodness. Oh, my God. It's so good. Vegetal. The potatoes are in there. Let's make a little plate. Serve this with rice, with noodles, with some bread. Whatever you want, really. But look at that thing. Absolutely gorgeous. Boom. Right in the plate. Get some of those stewed veggies around it. Some nice long grain rice here would be, ooh, that baby corn. The leeks from the garden. Blistered tomatoes. And then, look, we're going to do a little fresh guy with it. Some little fresh tomatoes. All right. Just because it's the time of year. And I like the little contrast. A little cooked with the raw. We got some Thai basil flowers. Beautiful little Thai basil. Let's get in there. This stuff grows like a weed. It's wonderful. And we're rocking and rolling right there, buddy. And then we'll eat one. I want to try it individually. The little potatoes with the leeks. Oh, my God. Ian. It's the best thing I've ever made in my life. A little blistered up sun gold. Oh, this is incredible. All outside, under an hour. Easy peasy. Look at that skin. Oh, my God. Ian, get in here. Look at this. No, not with your mouth, you dickhead. You believe this guy? Get the camera first, Bill. No, I ain't feeding you yet. Look at that. Just fall apart. Let's get it with a little sauce. Look, I'm going to get it with a little piece of baby corn. Ian, it's perfect. It's perfect. With a little piece of potato and leek. Here. This is for you. Don't burn your mouth. He's going to burn his mouth. Get in there. All right. Look at this. under an hour. In the outdoor Gosney. In the pizza oven. More like a cook in an anything oven. Chicken thighs. So good, you can cut it with a spoon. And ssss. Um, excuse me. What's the actual? The sauce is like, it's perfect. It's everything you'd want to put. This is the best thing I've ever made in my life. But it's like gravy. It's everything you'd want to put over a roasted chicken thigh. Oh my God. I got to write this down or something. It's the salt ahead of time. I swear to God, you got to salt your meat ahead of time. Do it in the oven. You saw what I did. Pay attention. Get your notebook out. Do I have a recipe for you? No, it's called a 30 minute video. Weeknight dinner. One, two, three, four. Bang. Actually, it was like eight steps. 99% of the chicken I've ever bought in my life at a restaurant is not as good as this. I need like a witness or something. Other than Ian. No, Bobby's good. But I starve him. I feed him anything. And he'd probably be good. You give him an overcooked hot dog on set, and he's like, thank you. Yeah, can I have some water, please? No, Ian. I'm just kidding. We have a whole walk-in full of seltzers. Sometimes I make cocktails. Huge thanks to Gosney for making awesome ovens, allowing me to cook some of my favorite stuff, especially in the hot summer days. You know, I don't want to be cooking, heating up the oven, blasting things in here, smoking it up. I got the AC on. This is my little nice chill spot. Outside, we've got a full kitchen going. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We're cooking things, braising things, blasting things, making yum-yum dinners. Let me get the boys. We'll feed them some chicken. Ian, you can have this one because it's a beaut. And the dogs can fight over that. We'll give Bonnie a little nibble too, a little Bonnie girl, get a little piece of chicken and some sauce. And we'll see you next time. Plenty more coming from that avenue. Call your... I don't give a shit.