Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Roasted Vegetables

I’m very fond of Mediterranean cuisine. There’s such a variety of flavors even though many use the same spices and ingredients. One of my all-time favorites is Moroccan food. I realized I loved it after trying a Moroccan beef stew recipe many years ago, and that love affair is still going strong. Fortunately, my husband is just as in love with Moroccan food as I am, so we are both looking forward to trying today’s Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Roasted Vegetables recipe. We don’t need much of an excuse to try a recipe that involves harissa, a spicy paste used in North African cuisine. This recipe slathers it all over a spatchcocked chicken nestled in a mixture of vegetables and olives. It sounds so yummy!

This easy Moroccan Spiced Chicken with vegetables is bursting with flavor but quick enough to make that you can serve on a weeknight.

The Ingredients

The list of ingredients for this Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Roasted Vegetables seems to be on the long side, but it wasn’t so bad after I realized what I had on hand. I had all the spices, some homemade chicken stock, and onion.

That left me to buy the chicken, produce, olives, and some couscous. I was able to find all of them at my regular grocery store.

The only item I couldn’t find was the store-bought harissa, so I decided to give making it a try. That added a few more items to my grocery list (mostly produce). Tip: I used a harissa recipe from Simply Delicious, and it walked me through the whole process. It was easier than I thought it would be, and I made it the day before I planned to make this chicken recipe.

The Process

Does this sound complicated to you? It’s not! The author does a nice job of breaking it down into manageable chunks so it doesn’t seem like so much work.

Tip: Things start off with preheating the oven and spatchcocking the chicken. I’ve done this many times before, and all you need is a sharp pair of kitchen scissors. It only takes a couple of minutes to do, and the chicken cooks so much faster than when it’s left whole.

After that, I mixed up the harissa spice rub and spread half of it onto the newly butterflied chicken. This part was a little messy, and a thorough hand washing after is a must. The rest of the harissa is used to make a sauce to go over the vegetables.

I followed the instructions for almost everything for the sauce except the orange zesting and juicing part. The instructions given are nice and clear, but I had an easier way to do it. Tip: I used my vegetable peeler to remove pith-free strips of orange zest. Once that was done I cut the orange in half and squeezed out the juice.

This is the home stretch! The last part of the prep work is peeling and slicing the vegetables. Tip: A good chef's knife is essential for this part, and this article with tips on how to peel garlic fast is a huge help.

Tip: By the way, this is a sheet pan dinner, but I used the bottom of my broiler pan. My sheet pans are pretty shallow, and I was concerned the harissa-chicken stock sauce would overflow. My broiler pan is bigger and deeper, and it was just right for this recipe. I didn’t spill a drop!

All that’s left is to let your beautiful dinner roast. It takes about an hour, but this is all inactive time except for stirring the vegetables once and adding a meat thermometer.

Timing

So how did my Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Roasted Vegetableswork out? Wonderfully! Here’s how my time was spent from start to finish:

• 17 minutes to prep
• 1 hour 4 minutes to cook
• 10 minutes to stand (I made the couscous at this time)
• 1 hour 31 minutes total

That was 1 minute longer than the 1 hour and 30 minutes listed, but it’s so close that I’m counting it as spot-on.