February 3, 2025
I made this with a buddy yesterday and I figured the recipe (such as it is) would be good to share. It's quite tasty and pretty simple, and feeds two dudes fine, probably more people if they're smaller and/or less hungry.
You'll need:
Preheat the oven to 350°.
Clean and trim the chicken and lay it in a pan. We used a disposable foil pan because one was already available, but any pan an inch or deeper will work. Make sure the chicken lies within one layer (no stacking).
Get the cranberry sauce out of the can and chop it into strips. Spread the pieces on top of the chicken in the pan.
Spice with whatever you desire---we used salt and pepper, cardamom, clove, and coriander.
Add some water to the pan, to 1/2--3/4 of the height of the chicken.
Cook on the first side for 20 minutes, then flip all the pieces over and cook another 10. (This worked well for fairly large chicken breasts. Tune as needed, and ideally use a meat thermometer).
After the 30 minutes, get a saucepan, heat it on medium-high, and sear all the chicken by taking two or three pieces at a time from the oven pan and placing them in the saucepan. Use the spatula to bring over chunks of cranberry sauce from the oven pan (they don't disintegrate that much in the oven). The chicken and cranberry sauce will develop a sauce of their own in the saucepan, so sear until this sauce is mostly evaporated. Don't bring over the water from the oven pan.
That's it! We found that the chicken was sweet and beautifully cooked without being overpowering in any regard. This goes nicely with some mac & cheese and probably anything else.