Chargrilled chicken with salsa verde, done properly

Tuesday night, half seven, and I’ve got a bloke on the pass telling me his salsa verde tastes flat even though he followed the recipe to the gram. I asked him one question: did you chop it by hand or did you put it through the stick blender. He went quiet. That’s the whole lesson right there.

Why the pan matters more than the marinade

Everyone wants to talk about the herb mix, the capers, the anchovy. Fine, we’ll get there. But the reason this dish works, or doesn’t, comes down to what happens before any of that touches the plate. You need a properly hot pan or a chargrill plate that’s actually smoking a little at the edges, not lukewarm and hopeful. Chicken thigh fillets butterflied out flat, patted properly dry, laid down on a surface that’s ripping hot, will give you those deep char lines and a crust with real bite. Do it on a pan that’s still warming up and you get grey, sweaty chicken that steams instead of sears. There’s no fixing that after the fact.

Thigh over breast, always, for this one. Breast dries out the second you look away, and I’ve watched enough home cooks turn a good chicken dinner into a leather strap by overcooking a lean cut that had no fat reserve to begin with. Thigh forgives you a minute or two either side. That’s the whole point of using it.

The salsa verde bit — don’t muck about with a blender

Salsa verde is meant to be rough. Parsley leaves roughly the size of a fingernail, not a green paste. The moment you tip your herbs into a food processor you’ve made pesto’s cousin, and it’s not what this dish is asking for. Get a sharp knife, a proper board, and give yourself ten minutes. Chop the parsley and mint fine but not to mush, mince the capers and garlic separately so you can control how much goes in, and mash the anchovy with the back of your knife rather than dropping whole fillets in. Taste as you go — this sauce lives or dies on balance between the vinegar sharpness, the salt from the capers and anchovy, and enough oil to bring it together without drowning it.

I’ll say this plainly because someone always asks: the jarred stuff from the supermarket fridge section is not salsa verde, it’s green vinaigrette with delusions. It’ll do in a pinch on a Wednesday you didn’t plan for. It won’t do for a dish you’re calling dinner and telling people you made properly.

What actually goes in it

Flat-leaf parsley does the heavy lifting, mint lifts it, and a small handful of basil if you’ve got some going soft in the crisper isn’t a crime. Capers, salted or brined, rinsed either way. A couple of anchovy fillets for depth, not fishiness, you won’t taste them as fish, you’ll taste them as savouriness. Garlic, one clove, finely minced, no more, this isn’t aioli. Red wine vinegar for the acid, a squeeze of lemon on top of that if your vinegar’s a bit shy. Dijon mustard, a small spoonful, holds the emulsion together. Extra virgin olive oil, the better bottle you’ve got, because this sauce is basically raw and it will show off whatever oil you use, good or ordinary.

Ingredients

• 800g chicken thigh fillets, skin off, butterflied flat
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for the pan
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Sea salt and cracked pepper
• 1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup mint leaves, packed
• 2 tbsp capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
• 2 anchovy fillets, mashed
• 1 small clove garlic, extra, finely minced
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (for the salsa verde)
• Squeeze of lemon juice, to taste
• Steamed greens or a simple salad, to serve

Method

1. Trim the chicken thighs of any excess fat, then butterfly and flatten them so they’re an even thickness throughout — this is what stops the thin edges burning before the middle’s cooked.
2. Combine the 2 tbsp olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon zest, salt and pepper in a bowl. Toss the chicken through and leave it at room temperature for at least twenty minutes. No need for hours, this isn’t a marinade that’s doing chemistry, it’s just seasoning.
3. While the chicken sits, make your salsa verde. Chop the parsley and mint by hand, fine but not pulverised. Combine with the capers, mashed anchovy, minced garlic, vinegar and mustard in a bowl. Stir through the extra virgin olive oil gradually until it comes together loosely, not thick like a paste. Taste it. Add lemon juice if it needs brightening, more oil if it’s too sharp, more salt if it’s flat. Set aside — it’ll only improve sitting for twenty minutes.
4. Get a chargrill pan or barbecue plate properly hot. You want it holding heat, not climbing towards it. A light film of oil, nothing excessive.
5. Lay the chicken down and don’t move it. Three to four minutes on the first side until you’ve got real char marks, then flip and give it another three to four minutes. Thickness varies, so check by pressing the thickest part — it should feel firm and spring back, not soft and give.
6. Rest the chicken for five minutes off the heat before slicing. This is not optional. Slicing straight off the pan just lets all the juice run out onto the board instead of staying in the meat.
7. Slice the chicken, spoon the salsa verde over generously, and serve with steamed greens, a simple leafy salad, or whatever vegetables you’ve got that need using.

What I put next to it

This wants something with a bit of texture and acid alongside it, not another heavy sauce competing for attention. I lean towards the Chickpea and Roasted Vegetable Salad with Red Capsicum Mayo when I want the plate to feel like a proper meal rather than protein-and-a-side-thought. If you’re feeding a table on a warmer night, the prawn and zucchini skewers off the same chargrill make good company, since you’ve already got the plate ripping hot anyway and it seems wasteful not to use it twice.

A variation worth having up your sleeve

Swap the chicken for lamb backstrap if you want something richer, or for a firm white fish fillet if you’re leaning lighter — the salsa verde does the same job either way, cutting through fat or lifting something plainer. If fish is the plan, have a look at how I handle the pan and timing over on garlic and herb baked flathead, the simple way, the principles carry across even though the method’s different. And if you’re building this into a broader week of eating rather than a one-off dinner, the framing in Nailing Nutrition is worth a read, particularly on getting vegetables and lean protein into proportion without turning every meal into an exercise in restriction.

Nutrition Australia’s guidance on lean meat and poultry backs up what I’m doing here with the thigh over breast argument, for what it’s worth, and CSIRO’s healthy diet research keeps landing on the same point about vegetable volume that I bang on about at every second dinner service. None of this is complicated. It just wants attention paid at the right moments, and a pan that’s actually hot when you need it to be.

Make the salsa verde the night before if you’re organised enough, it holds well in the fridge and the flavours settle in nicely. The chicken though, do that fresh. There’s no version of this dish that improves by sitting around after it’s cooked.

— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen