Chicken Roasted With Brown Butter and Plums

So this is a revelation, and a good way to use up a glut of plums without eating heaps of sugar. The tarragon is awesome with them, really awesome. If you don’t have tarragon use basil, slightly different but still aniseedy. Amazeballs. It reminds me a little of the star anise in Chinese chicken with plum sauce, just not as sweet.

Five ingredients. Five! Roast up some butternut squash and call it dinner. I like to cook everything in the oven when it’s on, if I can. Saving energy is good for our bills!

So. Brown the chicken breast(s) in butter, salt the skin and give it some colour. Lay it into a baking dish with onions, tarragon and arrange the plums. Add a little water to cover the onions and into the oven until it’s cooked and the plums are caramelised. Some wil be sweet and some tart, it works!

I made this first for two of us with double the ingredients and then for myself for lunch – sans squash – with half of them. Let’s pretend you’re cooking for two, if it’s more then y’all know what to do.

25g ish of butter
2 chicken breasts, skin on (it makes flavour and you can always take it off afterwards)
2 medium onions, sliced into thick half moons – about 5mm
Two stalks of tarragon
Plums, greengages and damsons or whatever you have available. I used 3 Victoria plums, 3 greengages and 5 damsons. Basically enough to fit snug around the chicken. Too few and there will be no juice left and they’ll burn to a crisp.

Brown the chicken in the butter. The butter will brown all by itself. If it looks like its burning add a touch of olive oil and turn down the heat.

Lay the onion moons in the baking dish and top with the tarragon.

Lay the chicken breasts skin side up and fit in the stoned fruits. Pour over the chicken butter, removing any burned milk solids first.

Cover the onions with water and put it into the oven. It took 45 minutes for my two chicken breasts to cook through. You know your oven, adjust accordingly and make sure the chicken is cooked. If everything is browning too quickly, cover it in foil and remove for the last 5 minutes to re-crisp the skin.

We ate ours with mashed up, bashed up squash and it was divine. A little sweet, a little tart, but damn good!