Sheet-Pan Roasted Chicken, Sweet Potatoes, and Brussels Sprouts
Prep: 10 mins
Cook: 45 mins
Total: 55 mins
Serves: 4 to 6
Ingredients:
For the Chicken and Vegetables:
2 tablespoons (30ml) gochujang
1 tablespoon (15ml) unseasoned rice vinegar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use half as much by volume
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons (45ml) neutral oil, such as canola, divided
One 1-pound (453g) sweet potato, peeled and cut crosswise and cut into wedges
12 ounces (340g) Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise (about 3 cups)
4 medium shallots (8 ounces; 226g total), peeled and quartered lengthwise (about 2 cups)
Six 5- to 7-ounce bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, excess fat and skin trimmed (140-200g each)
4 slices of applewood smoked bacon (4 ounces; 113g total), cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
For the Gochujang-Mayo Sauce:
1/4 cup (60ml) mayonnaise
1 tablespoon (15ml) gochujang
1 tablespoon (15ml) rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use half as much by volume
Directions:
For the Chicken and Vegetables:
Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position. Set an empty rimmed baking sheet on the upper-middle rack, and preheat the oven with the baking sheet to 450°F(230℃). In a small bowl, whisk together gochujang, vinegar, ginger, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of the oil until smooth; set aside.
In a large bowl, toss potatoes, Brussels sprouts, shallots, 2 tablespoons of the prepared gochujang mixture, and the remaining 1 tablespoon oil until evenly coated. Working quickly, carefully spread vegetables in an even layer on a preheated baking sheet. Roast on the upper-middle rack in the oven until lightly browned on the bottom and just beginning to turn tender, about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, pat chicken thighs dry with paper towels and rub all sides evenly with the remaining 2 tablespoons gochujang mixture. Gently flip the vegetables over, nestle chicken thighs, skin side up, between the vegetables on the baking sheet. Make sure the chicken and vegetables all have direct contact with the sheet pan and are evenly spaced apart. Sprinkle bacon on top and around the vegetables and chicken.
Reduce oven temperature to 400°F (205°C), and bake on upper-middle rack until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of chicken registers 175°F (79 ℃), skin is crispy, bacon is cooked, and vegetables are tender, 25 to 30 minutes.
For the Mayo Gochujang Sauce: While the chicken is cooking, in a small bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, gochujang, rice vinegar, pepper, and salt until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Sprinkle chicken and vegetables with sesame seeds. Serve with mayo-gochujang sauce.
Notes:
3 Simple Tips for a Sheet-Pan Chicken Dinner That’s Anything but Basic:
Choose bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. While it is possible to roast boneless, skinless chicken breasts without them drying out, choosing fattier bone-in, skin-on thighs all but guarantees juicy meat. The thigh meat’s abundance of connective tissue makes it both flavorful and forgiving of longer cooking times, unlike breast, which tends to dry out quickly. So even if you get distracted and leave the chicken thighs to cook for a few extra minutes, you’ll still have meat that’s tender and moist. Thighs that are about five to six ounces each work best for this recipe.
Add the vegetables, chicken, and bacon in stages. The problem with many sheet pan chicken recipes is that everything just gets tossed on the same pan at the same time, then chucked in the oven to roast.
This leads to uneven cooking, and one element can be undercooked while another is overcooked—you could end up with soggy, underdone vegetables and charred chicken or undercooked chicken and vegetables that have turned to charcoal.
To avoid this, we start by preheating the pan, then add the vegetables and roast briefly at 450°F before nestling the chicken into the pan and adding the bacon.
As Serious Eats editorial director Daniel Gritzer points out in his guide to how to make a sheet pan dinner with no recipe, getting your sheet pan hot in the oven before putting your food on it can help jumpstart browning the Brussels sprouts.
Once the chicken and bacon are added, we turn down the oven to 400°F and continue cooking until everything is perfectly browned and cooked through. To further ensure browning and keep the dish from being soggy, be sure to spread the vegetables out on the sheet pan rather than piling them up.
Finish the dish with a creamy, flavorful sauce. While part of the beauty of a sheet-pan chicken comes from its simplicity, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t zhuzh it up a bit, especially if you can do so with ingredients that are already sitting in your fridge.
Here, we serve the chicken and vegetables with a simple sauce of mayonnaise, gochujang, and sweet and tangy rice vinegar— the latter two are also used for seasoning the chicken and vegetables before cooking so you’ll already have them on hand for this recipe. It takes less than a minute to whisk the sauce up but it pulls the meal together for a dinner that’s easy enough for a weeknight, but special enough for company.
Notes from Amethyst:
Gochujang is a savory, sweet, and spicy fermented condiment popular in Korean cooking made with red peppers. You can find some here.
Recipe courtesy of Serious Eats.com