Juicy Yogurt-Baked Chicken

Take a cue from Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and use tangy yogurt to transform chicken thighs into an ultra-tender, deeply seasoned main dish! This Juicy Yogurt-Baked Chicken uses pantry ingredients to make an easy (almost totally hands-off!) meal for the whole family to share.

Sometimes the best recipes come from making things up on the fly in the kitchen. I love opening my fridge, freezer, and cabinet doors, staring at what I've got on hand, and finding a way to cobble it all together into something (hopefully) delicious. Winging it is not without its risks (especially if you are serving other people!), but every now and then you can stumble onto something great, just like Ramona and her sister Beezus do in Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

About Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Author Beverly Cleary (1916-2021) began her career as a children's librarian in the late 1930s. When she struggled to find books with characters her young patrons could identify with, she decided to write her own. Her first chapter book for young readers, Henry Huggins, was published in 1950. In later books, she focused on Henry's neighborhood friends, sisters Beezus and Ramona Quimby, creating the much beloved Ramona series. She went on to write over 40 books for young readers between 1950 and 1999, and lived to the astonishing age of 104.

Cleary was one of the most successful and honored American authors of all time, with over 91 million copies of her books sold to date. She received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association in 1975, was named a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000, and received the National Medal of Arts in 2003, among many, many other honors. Her work was uniquely in tune with the day-to-day experiences of children at school and at home, poignantly portraying their emotional highs and lows. In writing of her legacy in The New York Times, journalist William Grimes notes, "In a humorous, lively style, she made compelling drama out of the everyday problems, small injustices and perplexing mysteries — adults chief among them — that define middle-class American childhood."

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981) is the sixth of eight books in the Ramona series, and was named a Newbery Honor book in 1982. In this installation of Ramona's tale, she is in third grade and struggling to find her way at a new school. Life is stressful at home, too, as her father goes back to college after losing his job, and everyone must adjust to a new routine. But plucky, creative Ramona perseveres and the Quimby family comes together to support and love each other, even in the face of adversity.

Recipe Inspiration

'I can't find a recipe for chicken thighs,' said Beezus, 'just whole chicken. All I know is that Mother bakes thighs in the flat glass dish with some kind of sauce.'
'Mushroom soup mixed with something and with some kind of little specks stirred in.' Ramona remembered that much from watching her mother.
Beezus opened the cupboard of canned goods.
'But there isn't any mushroom soup,' she said. 'What are we going to do?'

Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8

One night, after complaining about what they were served for dinner, Mr. Quimby tells Beezus and Ramona that they will be responsible for cooking family dinner the next evening. Not truly believing that their parents would go through with the threat, the sisters are alarmed to find themselves sent into the kitchen the next night, responsible for putting something together for everyone to eat. Staring into the fridge together, they find a package of chicken thighs, a package of frozen peas, and two containers of yogurt. Panicking, they rifle through their mother's recipe cards and try to reconstruct dishes they had seen her cook before. They decide to mix the chicken with plain yogurt and bake it, along with harried attempts at a few other dishes, all while comically destroying the kitchen in the process.

To the family's surprise, the chicken turns out well! The girls had inadvertently stumbled onto a trick other cooks have discovered, too: When incorporated into a marinade, yogurt can tenderize meat and boost browning during roasting or grilling. I followed Ramona and Beezus's lead to develop my own version of a yogurt-baked chicken dish, with a few tweaks from their recipe to make it extra delicious.

In the book, Ramona and Beezus peel off the skin from their chicken thighs before cooking, accidentally flinging it around the kitchen in pretty horrifying fashion. I skipped this risky move and opted for boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead, which would require no prep (or subsequent cleanup!). To boost the flavor of the yogurt sauce, I whisked in a little bit of lemon juice (lime juice also works well!) and oil, along with some spices. In the story, Ramona remembers "red specks" as part of the sauce for the chicken. She adds chili powder to her sauce (though it turns out her mother usually used paprika), but everyone agrees it's even better with the chili powder. So, I used chili powder, too, along with some garlic powder and salt for extra seasoning. Letting the chicken marinate in the yogurt sauce for at least 30 minutes, rather than baking it right away, allowed time for all of those flavors to soak in thoroughly and for the chicken to become ultra-tender.

Marinating the chicken in the sauce right in the baking dish allowed me to transfer the whole thing straight from the fridge to the oven, where I baked it for about an hour. The yogurt sauce separated in the process, but left the surface of the chicken a beautiful craggy golden brown, and it was easy enough to lift the chicken out of the leftover liquid and transfer the pieces to a serving platter. I set some of the yogurt sauce aside before marinating the chicken, saving it to drizzle over the top, bringing back the creamy element and boosting the flavor even more. Ramona and Beezus stirred their frozen peas into their sauce, but since peas can become overcooked that way, I sprinkled my chicken with bright green herbs after baking instead, and served peas on the side. Tender and bursting with tangy flavor, this juicy yogurt-baked chicken is super easy for cooks of any age to make and contribute to family dinner. (But who has to clean up the kitchen afterwards is for you to decide!)

Ingredients You'll Need

To make this Juicy Yogurt-Baked Chicken, you'll need:

• Plain whole-milk yogurt: The consistency of regular yogurt is perfect to make a drizzle-able sauce, but if you only have Greek yogurt on hand, you can thin it with water to loosen it up. Don't use flavored yogurt here, though!
• Lemon or lime juice: Either works well here, so use whatever you've got on hand or that you like best.
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Spices: Mild chili powder and garlic powder boost the flavor of the sauce (and provide the requisite "little red specks"!).
• Table salt
• Cooking spray: Spraying the dish before adding the yogurt sauce makes it easier to clean up later.
• Chicken thighs: Using boneless, skinless chicken thighs means there's no need for prep here, other than a quick trim of any ragged edges or big pockets of fat. Plus, chicken thighs stay more moist and tender during baking than chicken breasts, which can turn dry and chalky in the oven.
• Herbs: A sprinkle of chopped fresh parsley, basil, or cilantro brings color and a pop of flavor to the dish, but they're optional if you don't have them on hand.

As with every recipe, before you start cooking, make sure to measure out and prepare your ingredients ahead of time. Then, you'll have everything you need when you need it! For all of the ingredient measurements and details, see the recipe card below.

How to Make Juicy Yogurt-Baked Chicken

The full recipe with detailed timing and instructions for this dish is below, but here are some key moments to look out for along the way:

• After whisking together the sauce coating the chicken with it, this Juicy Yogurt-Baked Chicken recipe is basically hands-off! There's lots of downtime for kids to play, read, or make side dishes or dessert while the chicken marinates and bakes.
• For kids who aren't as comfortable using a knife yet, there is little to no knife work in this recipe. If the chicken thighs need any trimming, that's most easily done with a pair of kitchen shears, and the herbs can be torn rather than chopped if that's easier for kids to do.
• The yogurt sauce is a blank canvas that kids can experiment with, just like Ramona and Beezus do! Kids can try swapping out or adding spices--blends like garam masala or five-spice powder would be great instead of the chili powder, and onion powder or spicy cayenne would bring more oomph to the party!--or stirring in things like a little bit of grated fresh ginger, citrus zest, hot sauce, or soy sauce. After trying the recipe once as written, encourage kids to get creative next time!

Conversation Starters

While your chicken marinates and bakes and as you sit down for a meal together, talk about what it was like to make the recipe and the themes in Ramona Quimby, Age 8. You can help young readers make connections to the book and share your own answers, ideas, and stories with them with the following prompts:

• Ramona and Beezus are tasked with making dinner for the family as a punishment for complaining about what their mother cooked for them. Do you think this was fair, or not fair? Is cooking dinner a punishment?
• Have you ever experimented in the kitchen before? What's the most surprisingly delicious combination of ingredients you've ever tried?
• Ramona has a hard time adjusting to her new school, teacher, and routine at home. Have you faced challenges when things have changed for you at home, school, or work? How did it make you feel, and what helped to make things better?