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Harissa roast chicken traybake
youryum.com/recipes/harissa-roast-chicken-traybake · serves 4

Harissa roast chicken, one tray

Chicken thighs roasted on top of chickpeas and red peppers, so the fat renders down into everything underneath. One tray, one wash-up.

  • Gluten free
  • Dairy free
  • High protein
By Dana Whitmore · Recipe developer
Published 28 July 2026 Updated 2 August 2026
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Roast chicken thighs on a tray with peppers and chickpeas
Photo: jamesdkirk · CC BY-SA 2.0
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Prep
15 min
Cook
45 min
Total
1 hr
Serves
4
Per serving
612kcal
Effort
Easy

The point of a traybake is not that it saves washing up. It is that everything underneath gets basted by whatever is on top. Chicken thighs give up a lot of fat over forty-five minutes, and chickpeas will drink all of it and crisp at the edges. Roast them in separate tins and you have made two fine dishes instead of one good one.

This is the recipe I cook when I have not planned anything. Fifteen minutes of work, then the oven does the rest, and the only decision left is whether to bother with yogurt.

Ingredients

Makes 4 servings

Underneath

To finish

Equipment

  • Large roasting tin, about 30 × 40 cm

Method

  1. Get the oven properly hot

    220°C fan. Not 200, and not the middle shelf. Chickpeas need real heat to dry out and colour instead of steaming in their own moisture, and chicken skin does not start rendering in earnest much below 200°C.

    If your oven runs cool, and most domestic ovens do, give it a full twenty minutes to come up. An oven thermometer costs about the same as a bag of chicken thighs and is the single most useful thing you can buy for roasting.

  2. Coat the chicken

    Mix the harissa, half the oil, the cumin and the lemon zest in a bowl. Add the thighs and turn them until every one is coated, pushing some paste under the skin where it lifts away easily. Ten minutes standing is enough. Overnight is better but it is not the difference between a good dinner and a bad one.

    Do not salt the chicken at this stage if you are marinating it overnight. The harissa is already salty and a full night of both will draw out more water than you want.

  3. Build the base

    Tip the drained chickpeas, pepper strips, onion wedges and bashed garlic into the tin. Add the rest of the oil and the flaky salt, then toss with your hands until everything carries a film of oil. Spread it into one layer.

    One layer is the whole instruction. Anything piled up will steam, and steamed chickpeas at the bottom of a tray are the most common way this dish goes wrong.

  4. Sit the chicken on top

    Arrange the thighs skin side up, spaced apart, resting on the vegetables rather than pushed down into them. The skin has to stay clear of the liquid that collects in the tin or it will never crisp.

  5. Roast for forty-five minutes

    No turning. No basting. Do not open the door for the first thirty minutes; every time you do, the temperature drops by 20 to 30 degrees and takes several minutes to recover.

    At forty-five minutes the skin should be dark at the edges and the chickpeas around the outside of the tin visibly crisp. If the chicken is ready but the tray is still pale, lift the thighs onto a plate and give the vegetables five minutes on their own at the top of the oven.

  6. Rest, then finish with acid

    Five minutes resting in the tin. Then squeeze over the lemon juice, scatter the parsley, and scrape up the sticky brown patches in the corners with a wooden spoon. That is the best-tasting part of the dish and it is glued to the tin, so do not serve without it.

What's in it

Nutrition, buying and storage notes for the ingredients this recipe leans on.

Chickpeas 8.9 g protein Red bell pepper 127.7 mg vitamin c Greek yogurt 10.2 g protein

Why the chickpeas crisp and yours might not

Tinned chickpeas carry a surprising amount of surface water. Rinsing gets rid of the canning liquid but leaves them wet, and wet chickpeas spend the first ten minutes in the oven simply drying off. That is ten minutes of your forty-five gone before any browning starts.

Pat them dry and you skip that entirely. You can also leave them spread on a tea towel while the oven heats.

What to do with the leftovers

Strip any leftover chicken off the bone and fold it through the vegetables with a spoon of yogurt and a squeeze of lemon. That is lunch, cold, and it is arguably better than the dinner.

The chickpeas will have softened overnight. Nothing to be done about that, and it stops mattering once everything is mixed together.

Nutrition

Per serving, for 4 servings. Estimated from ingredient weights — it moves with the brands and cuts you actually use.

NutrientPer serving
Calories 612 kcal
Protein 41 g
Carbohydrate 32 g
Fibre 9 g
Fat 34 g

Source: Estimated from ingredient weights, USDA FoodData Central

Questions

Can I use dried chickpeas?
Yes, but cook them first. They will not soften in a dry oven, whatever the internet says about it. Around 250 g dried, soaked and simmered until tender, replaces both tins.
How do I know the chicken is done?
75°C at the thickest part of the thigh, kept away from the bone. Without a thermometer, pierce it right down to the bone and look at the juices: clear means done, any pink at all means give it another eight minutes.
Can I assemble it in advance?
Marinate the chicken up to a day ahead. Do not build the tray early. Salt draws water out of the peppers and onion within about an hour, and you end up roasting them in a puddle.
What do I serve with it?
Nothing, most nights. The chickpeas are the carbohydrate. If you want something alongside, flatbread to mop the tin is better than rice, which has nothing to do.
Is two tablespoons of harissa spicy?
For a rose harissa, mild to medium. For a strong Tunisian one, hot enough that children will refuse it. Start with one tablespoon and add more next time.

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