This oven baked chicken is one of my favorite go-to meals for a weeknight when I don’t feel like putting out much effort but don’t want take-out.  It’s so easy and has only a few ingredients that you’ll wonder why you didn’t know about this already!

Difficulty:  VERY Easy, so easy that I considered not posting it… but then decided that if you don’t know about this super simple way of cooking chicken, you need to see it!

chicken thighs or leg quarters (bone in, skin on, and enough to feed your family plus few for leftovers)

garlic salt (or seasoned salt if you don’t have garlic salt on hand)

salt

pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Wash chicken.  You’ll need a pan with sides, since the chicken will release juices as it cooks.  Cover the pan completely with foil.  The foil just makes the cleanup easy, and ease is what this recipe is all about.  Well, that and delicious baked chicken!  Place chicken thighs on foiled pans.  Salt liberally.  Sprinkle garlic salt much less liberally.  Very lightly pepper the chicken.

Place in preheated oven for 45 minutes.  That’s all there is to it.  The skin will be crispy and delicious when it comes out of the oven.

Refrigerate leftovers.  I like to use the extra chicken in chicken salad, and in that case I debone the chicken before refrigerating, because who likes to work with cold dark meat chicken.

Given that this chicken is bone-in and skin-on, this is a bit of a messy meal.  I wouldn’t recommend making it for people you don’t know very well!

The Story:  When my mom made chicken like this at my house, I couldn’t believe how delicious and easy it was.  So now this is my go-to when I don’t have much time to prepare my meal.  I made this at a friend’s house one day, and when the oven timer beeped, my friend looked confused and asked what that noise was.  When I told her, she said, “Oh, I never use that!”  I was speechless.  It took some work and some perfectly baked cookies, but I have since convinced her that timers can be very helpful.