Finding a standout chicken recipe on the internet is no easy feat

You may already know this; thanks to the internet, there are a gazillion chicken recipes available. So many, it's hard to pick just one. I wanted to make braised chicken that had a big flavor and wasn't necessarily easy, and yet not too complicated.

Donald Link's 2014 cookbook: "Down South" seemed to lead me in the right direction with his oven-braised chicken that used some unusual ingredients. Who would ever think of combining salami and fresh fennel with chicken? Not me; until now.

If you don't recognize the name, Link is an award-winning New Orleans chef. Are salami and fennel Southern? Not likely, but Link knows what he's doing.

As I read through his recipe, I noted that he used a cut-up whole chicken and wheat flour to thicken the dish's sauce.

Over the years, I've found that bone-in chicken is hard to eat. I've always fumbled chicken pieces on my plate, trying to cut the meat from the skin and bones. And for me, picking up chicken with my fingers always ended up with a pile of greasy, sticky cloth napkins that required a washing machine to make them right again.

I decided that boneless, skinless chicken thighs would not only make eating this braised chicken more dinner-table friendly, but those thighs would cook in less time (Link's version required 1 to 1½ hours of oven time).

Adding that to the chopping and slicing time for the other ingredients meant this was just barely user-friendly.

Yes, including the chicken skin and bones in a braise bumps up the flavor. In this case, there were plenty of flavorful ingredients (like tomato paste, fresh rosemary, white wine and chicken broth) that would combine to blend this all together with the complexity of the ingredients' flavors.

Salami was a stumbling block for me since I rarely eat salami of any kind. At the store, there were several different kinds of whole salamis and a helpful person suggested Genoa salami would be perfect. She also said that I needed to pull the string on the salami to open it up so the powdery casing, which is inedible, could be pulled away to reveal the salami inside.

Since I'm staying away from wheat flour, I decided, since it had been successful in the past, to use xanthan gum to thicken my sauce and keep the carb count low.

In all honesty, it took more than a few minutes to get all the ingredients ready for cooking, and during that time, I hoped this braise was going to be worth all the effort (spoiler alert - it was).

It would have been nice if I could toss everything in a slow cooker and let it slowly simmer. However, the chicken thighs needed to be browned, the onions required a slow sauté to caramelize and bump up their flavor. And raw tomato paste needs to be cooked so that it's acidic edge sweetens a bit.

Once assembled, into my oven it went. I used a lower oven temperature to slow down the braise a bit. Using an instant-read thermometer let me know precisely when those thighs were safely cooked.

My kitchen filled with an amazing aroma while my chicken braised. It was hard to wait until it was done.

My braise had an amazing, indescribable flavor, and the chicken was cooked perfectly, too. Knowing the moderately high hassle-factor, would I make it again? Absolutely, if just to impress my guests.

Give it a try.

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.

Unique Gluten-Free Braised Chicken Thighs

3 pounds organic boneless, skinless chicken thighs

¾ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 medium fennel bulb, root-end and tops trimmed and thinly sliced

1 fresh rosemary branch (about 8 inches)

1 cup (about 4-ounces) diced Genoa salami

1 cup pitted green olives, rinsed and cut in half

1 teaspoon dried oregano

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

½ cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons tomato paste

¼ teaspoon xanthan gum

2¼ cups chicken broth

4 dried bay leaves

Juice of ½ lemon

Place the oven rack in the middle position and begin heating the oven to 350 degrees.

While the oven heats, season the chicken thighs all over with pepper. Place a large skillet over medium heat, pour in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and lightly brown the chicken in two batches, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the cooked chicken to a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.

Add the onions to the skillet and cook in the rendered chicken fat and remaining olive oil until brown, stirring, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, fennel, rosemary branch, salami, olives, oregano and red pepper flakes. Pour in the wine and simmer to reduce, scraping the pan's bottom. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 5 minutes.

While the tomato paste cooks, add the xanthan gum to the chicken broth and, using an immersion blender, blend until combined. Pour chicken broth mixture into the skillet; stirring to incorporate. Bring to a simmer. Stir in the bay leaves and lemon juice.

Pour the sauce over the chicken in the baking dish and roast, basting every 15 minutes, until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees (that temperature will go up to a safe 165 degrees while the chicken rests); about 45 minutes to one hour. Discard the bay leaves and rosemary. Serve, topping each chicken thigh with sauce.

Serves 6

Nutrition values per serving: 478 calories (43.7% from fat), 23.2 g fat (5.1 g saturated fat), 7.5 g carbohydrates (5.6 net carbs), 2.3 g sugars, 1.9 g fiber, 53 g protein, 198 mg cholesterol, 734 mg sodium.

SaltSense: Using low-sodium chicken broth reduces the sodium per serving to 543 milligrams.

Adapted from Donald Link's 2014 cookbook "Down South."