This might just be another chicken recipe floating around online, but mindful ingredient sourcing can bring it to entirely new levels, making you feel amazing. This simple lemon chicken recipe with thyme can be a nutrient dense classic that’s easy to make, especially when thyme is growing nearby. It’s especially delicious when served over rice or with a few slices of sourdough.
Lemon, Chicken, Thyme
If there’s one piece of nutrition advice I could give you for this recipe, it would be to try to find some good quality meat with the bone in—I usually use whole pasture raised chicken legs, skin included. Unless you prefer using low-histamine meat broth only (you know who you are), this can be a great way to get a dose of both meat broth and a little bone broth at once!
There’s something special about the flavour combination of lemon and thyme with the subtle creaminess of the broth. I used freshly picked organic thyme from my mom’s garden that was flowering. Impress your guests with this home cooked lemon chicken thyme recipe.
How to make this Lemon, Thyme, Chicken recipe
- Pan fry the meat on both sides in cooking fat—just enough to get the surface nice and crispy
- Get the aromatics cooking with the seasonings
- Pour the liquid in, and reintroduce the meat with the mushrooms and any other ingredients
- Boil, then simmer for some time to get the flavour and nutrients out of the meat and bones
More nose-to-tail recipes to try
- The Ultimate Chicken Soup
- Cosmic Meat Stew
- Grass Fed Beef Liver Pâté with Rosemary and Nutmeg
- Braised Osso Buco with Lovage and Carrots in a Bone Broth Tomato Sauce
If you tried this Lemon, Chicken, Thyme or any other recipe on this blog, let me know how you liked it by leaving a comment below. Be sure to follow along for more inspiration at Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.
Lemon, Chicken, Thyme
Ingredients
- 2 pieces pasture-raised chicken legs/thighs, bone in corn and soy-free
- 1 tbsp good quality cooking fat grass fed and finished, such as lard, ghee, duck fat, tallow, or good olive oil
- 1 small organic onion, small dice
- 3 cloves organic garlic, minced or more cloves, obviously
- 4-5 sprigs fresh organic thyme or about 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 cup organic/wild mushrooms, sliced
- 1 tsp sea salt
- a few cracks of organic black pepper
- 1/4 cup biodynamic white wine optional
- juice of 1 organic lemon
- 1/2 cup spring water
- 1/2 cup grass-fed cream or milk or gum-free coconut milk
Instructions
- Season both sides of the chicken with sea salt and black pepper. In a large skillet, heat up the cooking fat over medium-high. Sauté the chicken briefly, about 2-3 minutes each side, until the surface is slightly golden and crispy. Remove the chicken and set it aside on a plate.
- Add an extra bit of cooking fat to the pan if it's too dry. Add the onion to the skillet and stir until soft and translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme, stirring for 30 seconds in the fat, or just until the garlic is fragrant (not burnt!).
- Add the mushrooms and stir to combine. Season everything with sea salt and black pepper. Let everything sit for about 1 minute. Stir again, and add the wine (if using). Scrape up any brown bits from the bottom of the skillet.
- Bring it all to a simmer, and cook until the sauce is slightly reduced and thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining liquids for the broth: lemon, spring water and milk. Simmer for about an hour or so on medium-low, until chicken is cooked through and mushrooms release their flavour.
- Spoon some of the sauce over the chicken. Serve with extra lemon slices and freshly cracked black pepper.
Notes
- Take Your Thyme: The succulent thyme leaves usually fall off their woody stems once they’ve been simmered for long enough. For seamless serving, scrape off any remaining thyme leaves into the broth, and pick out (and compost) all of the bare stems from the pan before serving.
- Finicky Flour: A tablespoon of spelt (or other ancient grain) flour added to the broth can help thicken it and make it creamy if you prefer. You can also dredge the chicken in a light layer of flour before pan frying it. This is all optional, of course, and I usually skip the flour if I don’t feel like it, or depending on my goals (if I want more mental clarity and brainpower, I decrease my carbs).
- Find Good Quality Meat: I usually find that the flavour of lemon and thyme goes best with pasture-raised chicken, but other collagen/gelatin-rich cuts of meat would work just fine! Wild guinea fowl, quail, or duck are all excellent options. Simmer for at least an hour to reap the benefits (this is also good for the mushrooms… see below).
- Properly Prepared Mushrooms: Dr. Ray Peat suggests to cook button mushrooms for a couple of hours (minimum 1 hour, maximum 3) to reduce toxic compounds like hydrazine and agaritine which mostly evaporate through the steam, as well as make available phytochemicals that lower excess serotonin and inhibit aromatase activity (think cancer prevention), and the many more benefits we know that mushrooms provide. Simmered mushrooms also release more flavour, anyway. I didn’t use mushrooms in the photos, but I still recommend them if you have them!
