In preparing various meats, fish and poultry, restaurants often use a combination of pan-searing, then roasting to get that golden crispy exterior, while maintaining moisture on the inside.  This technique works especially well with bone-in/skin-on chicken breasts.

Not only does this result in a truly professional looking and tasting dish, the added bonus is that it’s faster than roasting alone.  The oven gets heated while the chicken is searing on its skin side.  Once the chicken is seared, it goes into a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes or so.

Since this was a weeknight meal, I decided to abbreviate the process of roasting potatoes by blanching them first, then tossing them into the pan with the seared chicken.  A couple of sprigs of rosemary, along with whole cloves of garlic, made this a spectacular dish–all done in about 40 minutes from start to finish.

In addition to the chicken, I found some good-looking dandelion greens at my local market, so I decided to blanch them in the water in which I cooked the potatoes.  Then I sauteed them with some bacon and garlic for about 20 minutes on low heat, while the chicken roasted.  Not bad for a weeknight meal after a very long day of work.

Professional Roast Chicken Breasts

Serves 2

1 split chicken breast, bone-in, skin-on

2 tbls olive oil

1 tbls butter

1 head of garlic, separated and peeled into cloves

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 small yukon gold potatoes, peeled and blanched in generously salted boiling water until crisp-tender (about 8 minutes).

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

On high heat, preheat an ovenproof skillet for about 5 minutes, until sizzling hot.  Sprinkle chicken breasts generously with salt and pepper.

Add oil, which will immediately smoke and ripple.  Immediately add chicken breasts, skin side down.

Allow to sear for about 5 minutes, undisturbed, on medium-high heat (depending on how high your flame is–mine is extremely high, so I turned it down to medium-high).

Add potatoes and garlic cloves, along with rosemary.

Dot with butter and place in oven, turning the chicken skin side up, about halfway through the process.  Roast until internal temperature of the chicken breasts is about 155-160 degrees–about 25 minutes.

Allow to rest for about 5 minutes, remove from bone and serve.