Greek Style Lemon Chicken

Dear Readers I have stumbled across a cut of chicken that may or may not always be on special - but yesterday I got enough chicken for 5 people for $7.60!!!  I could not believe it - that made this meal spectacularly cheap to produce.  While perusing the chicken shops I found that they were selling 1/2 chickens for $1.65 each!  So I bought a half for each person - they were not overly huge - but there was certainly enough meat for each person in their serve.

I had seen a recipe of the cover of the current edition of Super Food Ideas for Greek Lemon Chicken - this was a great meal as it was produced all in one pot - chop up everything, bake and forget!!  My kind of meal.  So armed with my chicken halves this was dinner last night.

Greek Style Lemon Chicken


Serves 5


5 x 1/2 chickens (or replace with pieces) - skin on *
300g baby red rascal potatoes, halved
2 medium red onions, cut into wedges
1 medium red capsicum, cut into strips
8 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 medium lemons
250g cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup kalamata olives (optional)
6-8 sprigs fresh lemon thyme


Preheat the oven to 200C.  Place the chicken in a large roasting pan.  Arrange the potato, onion, capsicum and garlic cloves around the chicken.  Pour over the stock.  Grate the rind from 1 lemon, and reserve.  Juice the grated lemon.  Cut the remaining lemon into wedges.  Add the lemon juice and wedges to the pan.  Season with salt and pepper.  Sprinkle with the thyme sprigs.

Roast for 20 minutes or until the chicken starts to brown.


Reduce the oven temperature to 180C and roast for a further 30-40 minutes.


At this point you may want to move the chicken and vegetables around to ensure even browning.  Add the tomatoes and olives, grated lemon zest, and roast for a further 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the tomatoes are starting to collapse.


* Cooking time is based on using the chicken halves - decrease each time segment by around 5 minutes if using pieces.

This was a great easy dinner - and cheap as chips to produce!  If you can't get the chicken halves try using maryland pieces.  If you have a Red Lea Chicken shop in your area have a look to see if they have the halves!!

So Dear Readers do you have a super cheap meal idea that you would like to share with us?  Perhaps a cut of meat that you have found that others haven't  discovered yet, and bumped the price up on it?  Remember when ribs used to be around $3 per kilo (that was before they got trendy!!)


As I type Dear Readers I am conducting a scientific experiment - can you make a cake and substitute the butter for Rice Bran Spread?  Will let you know tomorrow!!!