Roasted Chicken & with Crispy Rosemary-Orange Salad from Blue Apron Reviewed

With as much chicken breasts as I cook for low fat, high protein meals, I forgot how delicious bone-in chicken thighs were. And I had never tried the method of cooking them described in this recipe, so that's a cool new trick I picked up (I'll describe it below). Besides, that, I got another chance to cook my new favorite veggie, collard greens.

And what the heck is with the crispy rosemary orange salad? Well, it was pretty delicious. I can't say this is something that everyone will go for (it's got salt, pepper, and olive oil on it), but it's a nice change from the typical garnishes you get. This was more of the type of meal I expected from Blue Apron – adventurous, fun, and tasty!

Actually, the ingredients for this recipes were pretty normal except for the sherry vinegar which you might not have on hand. That goes in the reduction sauce we'll be making, so you can probably sub it out for a little bit of sherry and vinegar, or just skip the reduction and still have a great meal.

Usually when the instructions ask me to peel the orange and mince or use a grater to collect some of the citrus rind I use the grater. However, it's a pain in the butt and takes longer. So I just peeled the orange super thin, then did my best to cut out the pith and minced it. Much easier.

Here's a closeup of the fresh chipotle peppers included in this Blue Apron package. This is my first time trying ‘wet' ones, and I'm just used to the dry kind. I'm not a huge fan of the chipotle flavor, and would have preferred a more general “spiciness”, but it was still fun to experiment with new ingredients. They were pretty messy to cut though.

They'll be used in the reduction.

Here's a closeup of some oranges I cut. I honestly didn't look ahead in the recipe and was surprised that they'll be used for an “orange salad”.

Frying up some crispy rosemary. Yum! It was very fragrant. This is definitely a cool technique to use in the future for making your oils take on some interesting flavors.

Note: I used way too much oil I think. The collard greens turned out a bit oily. The instructions said to use a “thin layer”, but I think just use a little as possible and add as you need.

Prepping the chicken with the simple seasonings salt and pepper.

The cool trick I mentioned above for getting good results with the chicken was to pan fry the skins before baking. This gave the chicken a bit more oil (seasoned with rosemary) for flavor, and also gave the skins a delicious, crispy texture.

Here's the chicken pre-baking, with mushrooms. I chopped them way too small. If you're making this recipe, make them in sized you can bite with a fork. I thought they were going into a sauce so I cut them pretty small. They baked too fast, and burned a little. Larger pieces will do well in the oven with the chicken.

The mushrooms after baking are featured below. I removed them before the chicken was done because they were starting to get a little burned around the edges.

Now it's time to cook my favorite! Collard greens! I was pretty surprised that we're cooking the greens WITH the oranges. I might use less next time, and save more for the salad though. The orange salad was awesome.

However, using a few orange chunks in the collard greens is good because it gave them a little bit of a sweet flavor.

Here's where I'm starting to make the reduction (sauce). It's creme fraiche, sherry vinegar, water, and chipotle peppers. Simple, but delicious!

Still cooking…

And the final reduction!

Mmmm. You can see that the crispy rosemary-orange salad looks quite interesting. It's a strange combination of flavors I would have never tried together, but it's one of those things that I'll never forget. This is something I'll make for myself in the future, and I think would be very interesting to see how people react bring this ‘weird salad' to party!

Final product. Yeah, I tried to do a presentation “swipe” of creme fraiche like in the Blue Apron picture, but it's hard to see with the white plate.

Don't forget, you can view my other Blue Apron recipe reviews for more fun recipes from these guys.