Recipe: Easy Oven-Fried Chicken

Weeknight fried chicken almost always means picking up a family meal from Publix or Popeyes. After all, making it from scratch not only takes an overnight soak in a marinade but also a dedicated hour or so of time heating oil and carefully frying the chicken. It is decidedly not a last-minute, make-at-home meal —unless, of course, you know the right shortcuts to take.

The first shortcut is easy to pull off: scrap the long marinating time. Yes, chicken that has had time to sit in a buttermilk brine for at least several hours will be more flavorful, but you can still manage a fried chicken dinner with a marinating time that is only as long as it takes to heat an oven.

This hints at the second shortcut, which is to skip frying all together. Cooking the chicken in the oven may not take that much longer than actually frying, but you cut out time waiting for a deep pot of oil to heat, and clean-up is quicker. To oven-fry while also preserving the richness of oil-fried chicken, you’ll want to make sure to do two things: First, place a sheet pan in the oven as it heats to 450 degrees. This hot pan will jump-start the cooking of the chicken, shaving off at least a few minutes of cook time and increasing the potential for browning. Just before adding the chicken to the hot pan, drop on a knob of butter, which brings back some of the depth of flavor you lose when skipping hot oil.

The final shortcut? Use boneless, skinless thighs. This cut of chicken not only cooks quickly, it is also resilient and doesn’t suffer from aggressive cooking temperatures. Marinate the meat in buttermilk, dredge it in seasoned flour, and cook it in the oven in that hot butter. You may not mistake it for properly fried chicken, but you will certainly find it crisp and delicious, and a perfect pairing with any number of cold salads. Bonus: You don’t have to sit in the drive-thru.