This Italian-style rosemary chicken simmered in a rich tomato sauce with white beans and olives is a great everyday dinner that the whole family will love!
For more Italian recipes, check out my Chicken Marsala.
These chicken thighs, braised in savoury tomato sauce with beans and olives, are the type of comfort food that could be served for a casual weeknight dinner as well as a sit down dinner party.
It’s an easy, versatile recipe, and depending on what it’s accompanied by, could serve you well for a wide range of occasions. And if you are looking for something simple to prepare for your family dinner, this won’t take you longer than 30 minute of hand on time.
The rest is time in the oven when you could be doing anything else. A simple green salad or steamed vegetables will make a complete meal.
Why you’ll love it
A hearty, savoury stew is always a welcome addition to a dinner table. Like the best of Italian cooking, the list of ingredients might look simple but the stew is anything but boring. This is accomplished in classic Italian style – with tasty ingredients and thoughtful assembly!
The olives are definitely an Italian twist, but I think you’ll be convinced if you give this stew a try. They add a brightness to the dish, along with a salty kick.
And along with the rosemary, olives bring a complexity to what is, on paper, quite a simple dish. All together and you have a stew that is hearty without feeling a bit stodgy. Sounds good, right?
Ingredients
As most Italian and Italian inspired recipes, the ingredient list is not very long but the ingredient quality is high. All you need for this rosemary chicken recipe to be delicious are
- chicken thighs or legs
- fresh rosemary
- garlic
- anchovies or anchovy paste
- canned crushed tomatoes or tomato passata
- olives
- and olive oil
The tomato sauce is a riff on my very popular Puttanesca sauce. This time I incorporated it into a one pot meal by cooking chicken thighs in this bold and rich sauce and adding white beans to round it off.
Garlic, rosemary, anchovies and sweet, ripe tomatoes make this meal a huge winner. It is inspired by Italian flavours but I wouldn’t claim it as authentic in fear of incurring the wrath of Italian food purists!! 🙂
The Sauce
What makes this rosemary chicken and white beans so special is the sauce. And the sauce owes its extraordinary taste to anchovies.
If you are not a fish lover, I would still try to persuade you to give anchovies a chance! Essentially, this sauce is the Puttanesca sauce, so serving this saucy rosemary chicken with pasta is an excellent choice.
Although anchovies in a tin smell fishy, the sauce itself won’t. But what they will do is give the sauce that indescribable savoury taste, that is not very easy to achieve without the anchovies.
And don’t worry, you won’t have fish chunks floating in your tomato sauce. As soon as anchovies hit a hot oil, they start to melt and turn into a paste! You can also use chicken breasts but reduce cooking time by a half.
I hope this convinced to give my rosemary chicken in Puttanesca sauce a try!
How to serve
Authentic or not this rosemary chicken with white beans is always welcome at our dinner table. It’s delicious with rice or pasta!
And if you are avoiding carbs, you can enjoy this hearty chicken stew with a side of greens, broccoli or green beans. You name it!
An Italian feast
You can also use this rosemary chicken recipe if you are throwing a multiple course dinner party the Italian way. Start with antipasti in the form of cured Italian meats like salami and prosciutto with breadsticks, vegetables and fresh mozzarella or go for our crostini recipe.
Follow up with a simple pasta dish for secondi. Then serve this rosemary chicken with white beans and olives. And finish up with Amaretti Tiramisu for dolce. Job done!
Recipe tips and notes
- Although chicken thighs will bring the best flavour to this dish, breasts can also be used. If you do use, chicken breasts, reduce the cooking time in the oven to 30 minutes.
- I prefer green olives for a recipe like this, but any olives are also a good choice if they are what you have available. They will add a slightly different taste.
- Anchovies might be controversial, but they really do add amazing flavour to a recipe. Although they can be skipped if you really don’t like them, when they are cooked and have the chance to break down in a dish, they add deep savoury flavour that can’t be easily found through other ingredients.
- Not all crushed tomatoes are the same. Poor quality tomatoes are not as sweet as better types and don’t break down nearly as well. Find the best tomatoes you can afford, and especially keep an eye out for Italian tomatoes.
More delicious chicken recipes:
Italian Rosemary Chicken Stew
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 8-10 chicken thighs
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 4 cloves garlic sliced
- 3 fillets anchovies/1 tsp anchovy paste
- 2-3 rosemary sprigs
- 500 ml / 2 cups tomato passata or crushed tomatoes
- 125 ml / ½ cup water
- ½ cup /70 g green olives
- 1 400g /14 oz tin white beans butter beans or cannellini
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
- Salt and pepper chicken thighs and brown them over high heat in a frying pan in batches to avoid overcrowding and steaming until golden on both sides. ( You can skip oil if using non-stick frying pan.) Remove to a plate and set aside. Discard all oil but 1-2 tbsp.
- To the same pan add anchovies, sliced garlic and half the rosemary, fry over medium heat while stirring and trying to break up anchovies into a paste for 1 minute.
- Add tomato passata, water, olives, beans and bring to a boil. Taste the sauce and add salt if needed but be careful as both anchovies and olives are salty.
- Return the chicken back to the pan together with the juices that collected at the bottom of the plate and remaining rosemary. Cover with a lid and cook in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Then uncover and cook for 20 minutes longer.
- Serve with rice, pasta or a green salad for a low-carb option.
Alanna says
Another amazing dish for my special list of best recipes.
This was delicious! So full of flavour yet so simple. Love love love!
Julia Frey (Vikalinka) says
It’s one of my personal favourites. Such deep flavour for a chicken dish, isn’t it?!
hermsoven says
Julia, my pending comment needs a small edit. There’s a letter “u” before one word. How can I delete it?
Julia Frey (Vikalinka) says
No worries, I can amend it!! I am so pleased you loved this chicken recipe!!
hermsoven says
Hello Julia,
We just had this recipe, using 4 large bone-in thighs, for lunch and liked it a lot. Easy to prepare, the result was excellent. I cooked the dish covered on the stovetop on a medium flame for the first 20 minutes, and finished it on a low-medium flame uncovered. Mixed in a cup of cooked rotini before serving. A glass of Chianti went well with this dish. Next time, I’ll toss in a pinch of crushed hot pepper.
Thank you for posting this keeper!
Stephanie Elias says
I’m going to make this tonight…very excited about the anchovies and olives,I have chicken breast wonder if it will taste good?
vikalinka says
Chicken breasts will work but make sure to reduce cooking time, Stephanie.
Kelli says
Made this recipe, loved the interesting combination of the anchovies and olives with chicken thighs. Just a note from my experience me and my husband both thought the tomato sauce tasted too acidic. I know some recipes with tomato call for some sugar to break the acidity, I wonder if your crushed tomatoes were less acidic than ours? I would add sugar next time, but def cooking again.
vikalinka says
Hi Kelli, thank you for such a thoughtful response. The quality of tomatoes will definitely alter the taste of the sauce. Our canned tomatoes come from Italy because of the EU trade deal and they are very sweet and delicious. I didn’t realise how much tomatoes matter until we moved to the UK. I actually wrote a blog post about it here. I think your solution of adding the sugar also works.
Joan Poulton says
Have you tried to make it in a slow cooker?
vikalinka says
I haven’t done it, Joan but I am sure you can continue cooking it in a slow cooker after step 2 in the instructions. I wouldn’t add extra water though as slow cookers tend to retain liquid more than the stovetop method.
Little Cooking Tips says
Wow. What an amazing comfort food! Can’t wait for the weather to cool down a bit to try this (we still have summer weather here in Greece).
THANK YOU so much for the fantastic recipe, pinned! And congrats for creating it!
vikalinka says
Thank you so much for the kind comments. I wish we still had summer but I am afraid that is not the case in London! 😉
Natasha @ Salt & Lavender says
I bet this tastes absolutely amazing. Anchovies add that perfect umami flavor that’s hard to describe to those who hate anchovies lol. I think family dinners are very important, and with a mom who cooks amazing food like you do, I think they’ll be coming back in their 20s, 30s, and beyond 😉
vikalinka says
Oh gosh I hope so!! Thanks so much, Natasha and I completely agree about anchovies!