Roasted Chicken with Squash and Broccoli

This easy recipe for roasted chicken and vegetables applies the two most important lessons I  learned when I revamped my cooking and eating to embrace more real food:

1. Fat equals flavor.

2. Roasting makes everything taste better.

I have always been a pretty good vegetable eater, but mostly just because I knew they were good for me, not because I particularly loved eating them. My mother mostly prepared them either raw in a salad or steamed and plain, which is how I made them too when I grew up, and they mostly functioned as a side dish to whatever meat based main dish I was making.

Then when I needed to work on healing my digestion, I stopped eating raw vegetables that were likely to cause more irritation. Instead, I cooked carrots for four hours, as prescribed in the intro phase of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and forced them down. I added more peeled, deseeded, and well cooked vegetables like zucchini and spinach. It all tasted the same… like a whole lot of mushy nothing! I was starting to understand why people claimed to hate vegetables.

What’s worse is that my digestion wasn’t getting any better. Eventually I realized that the problem was not the vegetables, but other things I was eating and switched to a paleo autoimmune protocol. With the dairy, nuts, legumes, and other foods out of my diet I found that I could tolerate other things much better and started exploring new vegetables and ways to prepare them.

Enter roasting. The first revelation came when I made roasted cabbage. It was so delicious I had to stop myself from eating the whole pan! I expected to have digestive distress after wards, but was amazed to discover that I digested them just fine. Now every time I make something in the oven, I toss whatever vegetables I have on hand in a baking pan with a good cooking fat like coconut oil or bacon fat, sprinkle them with salt and herbs, and let them cook until they are beginning to brown.

This recipe takes that idea one step further and has everything roasting all in the same pan, which allows the fat rendered from the chicken pieces to coat the vegetables and add even more flavor.

I used chicken legs here, but you could do this with any chicken pieces or even a whole chicken. You can also swap out different vegetables and use whatever seasonings you would like. My favorite is my own rosemary, sage and garlic salt mix!

Notes for dietary modifications:

This recipe is suitable for most healing diets, including SCD, GAPS, and AIP.

Butternut squash is moderately high in polyols and oligos, so proceed with caution if you are following a low-FODMAP diet.

Roasted Chicken with Squash and Broccoli

---

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

5 from 1 review

• Author: Jaime Hartman
• Total Time: 1 hour
• Yield: 3-6 1x

Print Recipe

Pin Recipe

Description

Another delicious one pot meal of that allows the delicious flavors of chicken and herbs to meld with the vegetables as they all cook together.

---

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• One head of broccoli, cut into small florets
• One medium butternut squash, peeled and diced
• 3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
• Mixed herb seasoning of your choice
• Sea salt to taste
• 6 chicken drumsticks

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

---

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Toss broccoli and squash with coconut oil in an oven safe baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and herbs.
3. Arrange chicken on top of vegetables and sprinkle with salt and herbs.
4. Cover with aluminum foil or oven safe baking dish lid. Place in oven and roast covered for 20 minutes.
5. Remove foil or lid and roast for an additional 30 minutes or until chicken has reached 165 degrees.

• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 50 mins
• Category: Main

More great roast chicken recipes

• Sunday Dinner: Simple Roast Chicken – Nourishing Cook
• Easy 5 Ingredient Roast Chicken – GrassFed Girl
• Roasted Balsamic Chicken – Popular Paleo
• Lemon Garlic Roast Chicken – Meatified
• Oven Roasted Spatchcocked Chicken – DJ Foodie
• Simple Crockpot Whole Roasted Chicken – Don’t Mess with Mama
• Peruvian Roasted Chicken with Sweet Peppers, Onions, and Lemons – The Rising Spoon

Shared on Paleo AIP Recipe Roundtable.