Humble, rustic, vibrantly fresh One Pot Spanish Chicken and Potatoes, you say?
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Omg made this tonight and it was such a hit! Thank you so much for this recipe! A great dish to make when having guests!
jasmine
Yes okay CAN DO. I’m very much down widdat.
Watch How To Make This Spanish Chicken
One Pot Spanish Chicken and Potatoes is one of those recipe names where you read it and say, mmm! yumm! sounds so good! …. erhhhhm, so, like, *ahem* what is it? Let me tell you what my version of Spanish Chicken and Potatoes is all about, you food interneter BFFs. Let. Me. Tell. You.
Once upon a time, I lived in Sevilla, Spain. I know, right?! I was studying abroad, learning Spanish (un café con leche, por favor) and eating my way through Spanish recipes lovingly prepared by my host mother, Fatima. It was an extremely rare time in my life to travel ALONE, which, just so you know, for me to do anything alone is a big deal and not always my favorite thing, and so now that I can check off this experience on my life list, I see no reason to do anything alone ever again. Bjork is so thrilled right now.
But traveling. In addition to traveling and seeing the most amazing parts of the world (Morocco! Switzerland! France! Portugal!) obviously it was a hugely wonderful way for me to learn about food. I wish I could tell you I was super cultured with my food interests at that point in my life, because wouldn’t that be a nice story? Young aspiring food blogger learns about food and culture through boldly and bravely eating her way through Europe.
That picture you have of well-dressed American Student Me walking around with a glass of red wine and my pinkie in the air tasting different types of olive oil in the market? Just… no. Let those images crash and burn, friends, and replace them with a cheap pair of flats that I wore for at least 149 out of my 150 days abroad, an old tattered brown jacket, and a box of crackers (Digestives, anyone? I sort of became obsessed) and maybe some buttered toast with my cafe con leche.
Living the dream.
Last weekend, I was back at my parent’s house looking for an apple crisp recipe that matched the one that I found in the fridge and single-handedly polished off somewhere in the 10pm hour, and as I shuffled through my mom’s million and one recipe cards, I found this old recipe in my mom’s recipe box labeled “Tomato Salsa” from my host mother, Fatima. Throwback! I knew right away I had to make it because you guys would love it. And I already do love it. And I like to love food with you, and maybe I can make up for the crackers-and-toast phase by putting this recipe FROM SPAIN out into my food circle. Maybe? Don’t answer.
Fatima would make this sauce all the time, and she called it “salsa” – simmered tomatoes, eggplants, onions, garlic, olive oil, and salt thrown in this contraption called the Thermomix (anyone?) and it would cook into this gloriously fragrant sauce that would then get blended up into something of a smooth, rustic tomato gravy. We would put it on Spanish tortilla (eggs/potatoes/onions/cheese — CRAVING NOW) and just eat it straight up from the pan with a spoon. I didn’t love all Spanish food, but this was one recipe that I remember loving so much that I would eat it cold out of the fridge at night when I was homesick. Weird visual, TMI, sorry.
It’s been at least five years since I even thought about this sauce, so bringing it back to life with chicken and potatoes and serving it to my family for dinner over a truckload of steamy white rice was food-time-warp-magic.
Wait, though, this recipe! I was going to describe it somewhere back there and then WORDS.
One Pot Spanish Chicken and Potatoes is a warm, comforting, fragrant, and humble dinner recipe that features (besides the obvious – chicken and potatoes) fresh tomatoes, eggplants, onions, garlic, and olive oil. The building blocks of the whole meal are chicken and potatoes, as in that’s what’s going to make you feel extremely satisfied and deeply nourished and ready to hunker down for the long winter. PS. It’s time. We hit 40 degrees in Minnesota. I wore a hat yesterday. Lock the doors, close the windows, and I’ll see you in April.
But you guys. The real show-stopper in this recipe is the homemade tomato sauce. We’re talking about that fragrant marriage of simmered tomatoes, eggplant, onions, garlic, and olive oil pureed into that richly delicious rustic sauce. Licking the blender clean required.
And they work together beautifully, those two. The chicken and potatoes are delicious on their own, but these two main ingredients are simmered in the magic tomato sauce to grab all the good flavor and the whole one-pot-party is topped with a handful of fresh parsley for color and a cool, fresh ping in your mouth against the deep, rich flavor and acidity of the saucy chicken and potatoes.
I see so many good things coming at you the very second you toss a piece of crusty white bread into that pan of homemade sauce, and/or when you pile this beauty up on top of a steaming pile of rice. Just imagine it for two seconds: the crusty white bread sopping up that extra sauce alongside the simple, unpretentious, and flavorful chicken and potatoes.
Dead, right? Me toooooo.
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One Pot Spanish Chicken and Potatoes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 6 1x
Description
This one-pot recipe Spanish Chicken and Potatoes is full of flavor and vibrant color and is perfect served with a big piece of crusty white bread or over a steaming hot pile of rice. The recipe is one inspired from a tomato “salsa” my sweet host mother, Fatima, always made for me when I lived in Sevilla, Spain.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, sliced (about 1 cup)
- 3 cloves garlic
- 5 ripe tomatoes, cut in half
- 1/2 of a large eggplant, skin removed and diced (2–3 cups)
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 lbs. chicken breast meat
- 1 large Russet potato, sliced
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 teaspoon all purpose seasoning (I used poultry seasoning)
- 1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves
- crusty bread or rice for serving
Instructions
- Sauce: Heat the olive oil in a large, deep skillet over medium high heat. Add the onions and garlic. Scoop the juices, seeds, and flesh out of the tomatoes into the pan. Add the eggplant pieces and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes or until everything is soupy-like and softened and very good smelling. Place the scooped out tomato halves over the sauce, open side down. Simmer for a few minutes until the tomatoes have steamed and softened. Break them up in the pan and simmer for another 5-10 minutes to get all the flavors real nice and yummy.
- Blend: Transfer to a blender or food processor, puree until mixture reaches your desired consistency, and stir in the salt. Taste and adjust to you liking.
- Chicken and Potatoes: In the same pan, add one more quick drizzle of olive oil and add the chicken and potato slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and seasoning. Saute for a few minutes on each side until they are browned.
- Finish: Add the sauce back to the pan, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken and potatoes are fully cooked. Top with fresh parsley and serve with crusty white bread or rice.
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: Spanish
Keywords: spanish chicken, chicken and potatoes, spanish chicken and potatoes
Frequently Asked Questions For This Spanish Chicken
This would be delicious with roasted cauliflower in place of the chicken!
Yes! The texture of your sauce will be a bit different (less creamy) but it will still work. To make up for the difference, I would suggest either adding a can of beans (to be pureed when you blend), a few more tomatoes, or adding a bit of cream to the sauce.
Yes, the sauce will freeze nicely!
Yes, you can slice them into smaller pieces if you’d like or use chicken tenderloins which are naturally smaller. I generally prefer smaller, thinner pieces of chicken but whole chicken breasts also work.
Yep, chicken thighs would work here as well!
This has been in constant rotation ever since I first discovered it. It’s so good! It’s amazing what tomatoes garlic onion and salt can do. In my most recent iteration I added a bell pepper, and I highly recommend it added a lovely flavor that was almost a little smoky. Very good. (I don’t add the eggplant cuz I have a vendetta against them)
Good afternoon,
Can you substitute frozen avocado cubes instead of eggplant?
Potatoes don’t cook at all like described, ruined dinner night.
We used this recipe for a dinner honoring a missionary couple from Spain. We made four recipes and fed 26 people with the main dish served over rice. It was just enough! The ladies that fixed it enjoyed the process and the flavors were outstanding. We added some Paprika for a little more Spanish zing. A mixed vegetable, grape tomato, olive salad and some churro cheesecake rounded it all out. It was a great dinner!
I confess I made this with canned tomatoes and skipped the eggplant and it was still really delicious!! Served over rice and my family of four ate it for dinner and leftovers. Great simple recipe with a great flavor!
It’s like a badly done vegetable soup with bits of chicken and potatoes. It’s laughably bad. I’d imagine all comments are made by author and her friends
Was a total fail! It smells great! But came out chicken in a purée
Looks delicious can’t wait to make. I will be serving this tonight. Thank you
Used a bit of chicken stock to cook the onions, eggplant and tomatoes instead of so much olive oil. At the end I added two heaping tablespoons of pimento stuffed olives. Next time I am also going to add a palm full of raisins. I served it with a salad and garlic bread. It’s a good dish and certainly a little something different for our table.
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So excellent and wonderful, by far this is awesome
Thanks for sharing this great tips
Thank you so much for sharing this, this is very great cook and specie of recipe you used
Where is the spinach in this recipe? Just saying.. lol
No spinach in this recipe. 😉
This looks so delicious and easy to make I will definitely make this dish
Made this last night and it was fantastic! We used a whole Asian eggplant because they are smaller and we didn’t have a plan for the second half of the larger kind. We used a bit more poultry seasoning than recommended and a bit of sugar at the end because it was a little sour (winter tomatoes!). We also wanted it a bit saucier and put in a splash of chicken stock while everything cooked at the end. Served over rice, and we have lots of leftovers! Would definitely make again.
Only recommendation to improve the recipe would be a little guidance on how thick the potato should be sliced. Ours took a bit longer to cook than expected because we may have not gone thin enough.
This recipe is Caucasian as hell. Other than a sprinkling of salt, where are the seasonings?! Spain is in the Mediterranean. Where is the cumin, turmeric, red pepper, coriander, anything?
My husband made this for dinner and it tasted like tomato water.
Hi, I have friends coming over and hope to make this. One of them is veggie. I was going to make the sauce and then separate out a bit for her. Any suggestions on what else I could put in that would go? I was wondering about chickpeas and spinach.
Chickpeas and spinach would be perfect veg-friendly options here! You could also do a full eggplant instead of half.
Lindsay, I’ve been following you for a long time. You are my first go-to for a recipe that I will always like. I am hosting a student from Spain and wondered if Pinch of Yum would have anything authentic for me to make for her. I put in Spanish and found a real-deal recipe, Thermomix and all (just heard of that machine!). You never disappoint! Thank you!
I make this a lot. I add a pinch of turmeric, powdered chicken stock, smoked Spanish paprika and I use canned tomatoes with a few fresh cherry tomatoes diced up. If you cut all the ingredients up very small, you don’t need to use your blender, so one thing less to wash up. And you don’t need to brown the chicken or potatoes, just add them to the pot and put the lid on. I use a few cubes of frozen spinach instead of the eggplant/aubergine so prep is even quicker. Some diced chorizo if you have it as well or some bacon. This recipe works well with chicken thighs which are moister than chicken breasts.
I made this recipe for my family and we all loved it! My son to it to his job site cold the next morning–when he opened it, the other guys commented on how good it smelled. He said it tasted amazing again!
I was excited about this. I keep going through the recipe to see if I missed something but I did everything according to recipe. It is not a keeper for our family. We found it to be very bland it did not look as colorful as the picture. We were all piling on the salt.
Just made this after coming upon the recipe. I happened to have an eggplant. I used canned fire roasted tomatoes, some V8 to help add fluid and balance the fire roasted tomatoes, the chicken breast and thigh chunks I had from the freezer and some broken up Italian sausage. As with any tomato dish I sprinkle a bit of baking soda to decrease acidity. (Game changer for some of us. No more heartburn. It also brings out the sweetness of the tomatoes.) I add a pat of butter to any sauce at the end. It helps emulsify and combine flavors. Served over rice cooked in chicken broth. Absolutely delicious! The eggplant adds another layer of flavor and texture to the sauce. The parsley is necessary for color, freshness and the herbacious flavor. I can imagine several variations on the recipe that would all be yummy. The sauce makes the dish however. This recipe is a keeper!
So glad to hear it, Anne! And thanks so much for the tip on the tomatoes!
Very bland, I’ve been back to read the recipe several times to see if I’d missed something.
Hi Kat! So sorry to hear that. Perhaps the dish needed extra seasoning in step 3? We appreciate the time you’ve taken to share your feedback!
Tried this recipe out, followed it exactly as shown on the video and it was honestly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever made in my whole life. Made my eyes water and nearly threw up just having a teaspoon of the sauce. Please don’t try this.
Sorry to hear that it didn’t turn out! We appreciate the feedback.