Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken With Scalloped Potatoes One Pan

This is a sister recipe of everybody’s favourite Bacon Wrapped Chicken – with the added bonus of a potato side dish!

I didn’t realise until I wrote the recipe out that this is actually a one pan dish. It’s a “fancy enough for company” midweek meal I’ve been making for years. You know when you’ve made a recipe so many times it becomes second nature to you? I actually had to weigh and write the ingredients down properly when I made it to share the recipe with you! So you might be wondering why I intentionally make this in one pan, without the primary objective being less washing? Well, it’s simply because of extra flavour! I have a hang up about not wasting flavour. I am big on deglazing pans (the brown bits on the pan is gold!), I make things like this Julia Child Zucchini Tian which is made using the juices squeezed out of the zucchini (this is truly a genius recipe), and of course I’m a big fan of meals made entirely in one pot so all the flavour is trapped and makes it onto my dinner plate!

These scalloped potatoes….they are just GOLD. For something made with so few ingredients, the flavour is out of this world. And the secret is the chicken juice which drips onto the potatoes while they are baking via the salty prosciutto (more free flavour, more free flavour!). The other little secret tip I have is making the surface of the potatoes golden brown pretty much all over. There’s no denying that plonking chicken on top while it bakes means you get less browning on top on some parts of the surface of the potatoes. To get around this, firstly, I make sure to use a large baking dish or ovenproof skillet (pictured), so there is at least 50% of the surface area of the potatoes not covered by the chicken. And secondly, right at the very end while the chicken is resting, I scatter over some parmesan, crank the heat right up to max and pop the potatoes back in for 5 minutes to brown the top. Check out these golden brown potatoes!

The concept behind this recipe is the same as my One Pan Rotisserie Chicken on Potato Gratin. But I think it’s fancier because it’s STUFFED! Oh – speaking of stuffed – no fussy kitchen string required for these! The prosciutto effectively holds the chicken roll up together, then I just stick some toothpicks in the ends to seal it (just roughly is enough). Sometimes I don’t even bother with the toothpicks. What happens is that some of the ricotta comes oozing out of the side like sausages – like the photo on the right (from another time I made this 🙂 ). Though it means there is less ricotta inside, I really love the bits that ooze out because they brown. So delish! If you are making this to impress (think your hubby’s boss, date etc), you can either use a rolling pin to flatten the chicken more evenly or use scissors (or a knife) to trim the lump parts of the chicken so when it is cut open, the ricotta filling is perfectly centred. I sometimes trim the chicken slightly but I’ve never bothered flattening it because this is one of my shortcut recipes. 🙂

Speaking of shortcut, the key thing in this that really makes it “work” with so few ingredients is the prosciutto. It adds flavour and salt to both the chicken and the potatoes, plus texture to the dish as a whole because it is quite crispy. It won’t work as well with bacon because it is much thicker. Jamon will work just as well though! What do you think? Worth trying? 😉 – Nagi x