Roasted Chicken and Croutons with Fish-Sauce Butter

From Eric Kim via NYTCooking, roasted chicken thighs, toasty croutons, and a scrumptious, quick sauce made with Vietnamese Fish Sauce, brown sugar, lemon, and butter. The perfect weekday meal.

Prep Time15

Cook Time35

Course: dinner, Main Course

Cuisine: Asian-American

Keyword: brown butter, Chicken thighs, croutons, fish sauce, oven-baked

Servings: 2 servings

Ingredients

4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 pounds)
Kosher salt such as Diamond Crystal and black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
¾ pound bread crusts removed, bread torn into bite-size pieces about 4 cups;
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons COLD unsalted butter kept in one piece
Cilantro leaves with tender stems for serving
scallions or chives, chopped garnish for serving

Instructions

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and season lightly with salt and pepper. (The fish-sauce butter is plenty salty, so don’t overdo the salt here.)
Arrange the chicken skin-side up on a sheet pan and drizzle the oil over the chicken skin, coating it evenly.
Roast until the chicken is light gold and the sheet pan is a pool of hot, rendered chicken fat, SCHMALTZ, about 20-25 minutes.
Take the sheet pan out of the oven, scatter the bread around the chicken. Using tongs toss gently to coat in the chicken fat.
Place the pan back in the oven and roast until the chicken is golden, crispy and sizzling (you’ll hear it), about 15 minutes.
While the chicken roasts, combine the brown sugar, fish sauce and lemon juice in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook, occasionally swirling the pan or stirring the sauce with a wooden spoon, until it bubbling vigorously and the mixture has reduced by about half, 2 to 3 minutes.
Turn off the heat and add the butter, constantly swirling the pan or stirring with a wooden spoon, until all of the butter has melted and incorporated into the fish sauce mixture. It should be a heavy syrup consistency.
To serve, scatter the cilantro and scallions or chives over the chicken and croutons. Spoon some of the fish-sauce butter over each chicken thigh, reserving some to add to each plate for dipping the chicken and croutons while eating, so yummy.

Notes

Roasting chicken thighs in a hot oven is a hands-off way to achieve two of life’s greatest pleasures: crispy skin and golden schmaltz. And you want that chicken fat because it will crisp hand-torn bread into croutons. A bold but balanced fish-sauce butter that you whip up on the stovetop while the rest of the meal takes care of itself in the oven, takes this over the top. Be sure to start with cold butter; the gradual melting of the fat helps thicken the sauce without breaking it.
After making this dish...go get his cookbook, Korean American, another winner.