Butternut Squash, Apple + Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner {Paleo, Whole30, GF, DF}
This Quick + Easy Weeknight or any night dinner is a not only easy but you can feel good knowing you are serving a healthy delicious dinner to your family! Only 5 ingredients + Salt and Pepper, all cooked on one sheet pan to not only make dinner easy but also dishes!! Perfect for your whole family but also looks pretty enough to serve to your dinner guests! You can use bone-in skin-on chicken thighs or drumsticks in this recipe. You could also sub the butternut squash for sweet potato {I have done both and they are also delicious!}. 4-6 Servings. This recipe is easily adaptable to add more or less chicken, butternut and/or apple.
Ingredients
- 4-7 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. See note above.
- 5 cups 3/4-1 inch peeled, seeded + diced butternut squash. See note above.
- 1 large honeycrisp apple** about 3/4 to 1 inch diced (about 3 cups diced). See note above as well.
- 1 cup fresh sage leaves
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt + pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven 450 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchament paper.
- Wash and dry chicken well. Place on sheet pan.
- Add cubed butternut + apple + sage leaves to the pan, leaving the chicken uncovered.
- Drizzle evoo all over chicken + butternut and apples. Be generous, but not too generous (I got a little carried away;)).
- Salt and pepper chicken and the rest of the pan, making sure everything is well seasoned.
- Using your hand rub evoo, salt + pepper into chicken and mix butternut, apple + sage with the evoo, salt + pepper well. Really get it there!
- Try to make sure all-most of the butternut and apples are touching the bottom of the pan, but no worries if it doesn't all fit. Place pan in preheated oven.
- At about 30 minutes check the pan to see if you need to drain some of the juices (+ I was a little too generous with the evoo). I had to do this with this recipe; however, when I've made it before with drumsticks and sweet potatoes I did not need to do this, so just take a peek. If there's a lot of juice, very carefully drain the juices off and place back in the oven. The apple also helps contribute to all the juices.
- Roast at 450 degrees for about 45 minutes. Cooking time will depend on the size and how much chicken you have. Cook until chicken is golden brown, has an internal temp of 165 degrees and the apples + butternut squash are fork-tender. The good news is that due to the fat content of bone-in, skin-in chicken it's a little more difficult to overcook:).
- You can eat the crispy sage whole or crumble it on top of everything. Enjoy!!
Notes
*I haven't used other apple varieties here. Honeycrips are pretty juicy so a less-juicy variety may be even better! I like that honeycrip aren't too sweet.