I’m so pleased with how this chicken and lemon tray bake turned out! It’s absolutely loaded with big flavours…making for a deliciously melting keto chicken bake. Packed with zingy roasted lemons and tangy capers. It delivers a really tasty and healthy chicken recipe in record time.
With winter drawing to a close (thank God for that!) the allotment is pretty bare, save for some delicious Cavolo Nero leaves, so they’ve made a welcome addition of green to this chicken and lemon tray bake. Kale is my absolute go-to vegetable because it’s so delicious, ridiculously healthy and is in season pretty much year-round. What’s more, if you roast it for about 5 minutes you end up with the tastiest kale chips ever. They add a welcome crunch to this dish (and this one too!). Like all brassicas, it’s full of vitamin C which is just what you need when a certain toddler is bringing home all the germs the nursery has to offer!
For the lemon and chicken tray bake, I went with thighs instead of breasts. Either would work great but for me, thighs are definitely much more flavoursome and they’re better value too. I went with skinless and boneless thigh fillets, because they cook quicker and are a bit easier to eat, which is great if you’re feeding a family. As well as the flavour boost from the chicken thighs, there are plenty of other big, bold flavours going on. Roasted chillis give a nice background heat, the capers add some serious pops of tanginess and thyme brings everything together beautifully. Butterbeans are perfect for making the dish a bit more substantial and are still pretty low in carbs, great if you’re after a keto chicken bake. But the real revelation for me was the roasted lemon slices…BOOM! They taste absolutely beautiful and add so much juiciness and lip-smackingness to the dish, definitely something I’m going to be cooking more of.
The result is a really tasty and healthy lemon chicken tray bake, but one that’s quick and easy to prepare. Thanks to Donna Hay for the original inspiration – her book Everyday Fresh is excellent!) There are lots of ways you could mix things up too, sea bass fillets would go amazingly with all the other flavours, or you could give it a veggie slant by swapping the baked chicken for baked halloumi instead. If you come up with your own keto chicken bake I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Serves 2
Ingredients 2 tbsps / 30ml olive oil 5 cloves of garlic, left whole & lightly crushed 1 lemon, thickly sliced 40g capers 80g pickled guindilla chillis A handful of thyme sprigs 2-4 chicken thighs (depending on how hungry you are) 1 tin of butter beans (1) 2 handfuls of Cavolo Nero leaves
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C or 400F.
In a parchment-lined roasting tin, add the oil, garlic, lemon, capers, chillis and thyme. Roast for 8 minutes. Add the chicken and & butterbeans and bake for 12 minutes. Add the Cavolo Nero & bake for 5 minutes more, or until crisp and chicken is cooked through.
Divide between two plates (making sure you get all the delicious juices too) and enjoy. As low carb chicken recipes go, they don’t get easier or tastier!
Useful tips
(1) – You can soak and cook your own butterbeans which is ideal, but if like me you never get round to it, try and get some organic tinned ones. You’d be amazed at how many random preservatives and rubbish end up in the non-organic varieties!
