Most Fridays we go to visit several of our kids and I especially enjoy watching them cook and try new and interesting dishes. Yechiel, one of my SILs, comes from a mom who is also an inventive and terrific cook and he takes after her. So frequently, he’ll urge me to taste something new or I’ll ask him what he’s making. A coupla weeks ago, I watched him slice up a bunch of onions and asked him what it’s for. He swung around and said, it’s great! you gotta try it. This is a surprisingly simple recipe, very few ingredients but the depth of flavor is astonishing despite that. What you’re basically doing is creating onion jam in the fat from the chicken (and a bit of olive oil) and the taste is just extraordinary. The chicken gets meltingly soft, as does the onion.

So gather your ingredients and onward! Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C.

Now I used about 8 drumsticks and thighs, cut in half but you can use all thighs if you prefer, bone in, skin on. K. Season your chicken with salt and pepper and about a teaspoon of brown sugar per piece of chicken skin side up.

Then take all the onions – 6 nice sized ones and slice into rings like so:

Layer about half the onion rings in the bottom of a deep baking pan and lay the chicken skin side down on top of the layer of onions. Then season the bottoms of the chickens with additional salt, pepper and brown sugar.

Now top the chicken with the rest of the onions in a layer.

If the chicken peeks out a bit, no worries. K. Drizzle the top layer of onions with the olive oil.

Now take a piece of parchment paper, crumple it (this makes it easier to work with) and place over the top.

And over that, place two sheets of tinfoil and crimp tightly all around.

Place chicken in hot oven and let cook covered for an hour and a half. Remove from oven, take off tinfoil and turn chicken skin side up and place back in oven and cook an additional 1/2 hour to forty minutes more or till chicken gets some browning and onions cook down and get darker and give up liquid. Use a sturdy pan for this since it produces quite a bit of liquid and you don’t want it to spill on you.

It really behooves you to make some rice to go with this chicken, it’s a marriage made in heaven. Oven Baked Rice is easy and pairs beautifully with it. Your guest will weep with joy. Btw, best of all? It’s even better a day or two later since the flavor deepens. Yum yum.

Yechiel’s Chicken with Onions

6-8 thighs and drumsticks

6 medium onions peeled and sliced into rings about a kilo and a half or around 3 pounds

8-10 teaspoons of brown sugar

Salt and pepper

3-4 tablespoons of olive oil

Directions:

Place layer of sliced onions on bottom of pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and some brown sugar on each piece of chicken. Place chicken skin side down on top of onions. Sprinkle bottoms of chicken with salt, pepper and brown sugar. Cover with another layer of onions. Drizzle olive oil over all. Cover with parchment paper and tinfoil tightly.

Cook 350 F/180 C for about an hour and a half, remove from oven, flip chicken pieces over return to oven and cook uncovered approximately an additional 30-40 minutes till richly browned and onions are meltingly tender. Serve hot with rice and spoon onions over chicken and rice.