Name: Sheet-Pan Chicken with Lemon and Olives
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 8 chicken thighs, bone-in, skin-on; 2 lemons, one sliced, one juiced; 1 cup green olives, pitted; 3 tbsp olive oil; 4 cloves garlic, smashed; 1 tsp dried oregano; To taste salt and black pepper; A handful parsley, chopped, to finish

Sheet-Pan Chicken with Lemon and Olives

Bone-in thighs roasted hard until the skin shatters, with olives and lemon doing the sauce's job.

Serves

Prep

15 min

Cook

45 min

Written

July 25, 2026

Method

Heat the oven to 425°F.

Pat the chicken thighs dry and season all over with salt and pepper.

Toss the thighs, lemon slices, olives, and garlic with the olive oil and oregano on a sheet pan, then arrange skin-side up in a single layer.

Roast until the skin is deeply browned and blistered and the juices run clear, 40 to 45 minutes.

Rest the chicken on the pan for 5 minutes, then spoon the pan juices and lemon over the top.

Squeeze the juiced lemon over everything and scatter with parsley just before serving.

Notes

The skin is the whole point, so don’t crowd the pan — thighs touching each other steam instead of crisping. If you only have boneless thighs, cut the roasting time by a third and check them early; they’ll brown faster and dry out if you leave them to the full 45 minutes.

The olives are doing the seasoning work a pan sauce usually would, so taste one before you add extra salt. Leftovers are good cold, picked off the bone and tossed through a green salad with a spoonful of the lemony pan juices.