Frances’ Chicken & Potatoes

Some recipes feed people… and some recipes feed an entire Italian family packed wall-to-wall in your grandparents’ house on a Sunday afternoon. Grandma Pizzo’s Chicken and Potatoes was THAT recipe.

Every time we went to my grandparents’ house, it felt like a party before anybody even rang the bell. Cars lined up outside, kids running everywhere, somebody yelling from the kitchen, somebody else arguing about the baseball or football game, and the smell of garlic, onions, chicken, and Sunday gravy filling the whole house.

My Uncle Carmine and Aunt Marie would come from Jersey with their four boys. Uncle Tony and Aunt Paula came with their three kids. Aunt Tina and Uncle Philly and their three kids too. Then everybody got married… then THEY had kids… so just imagine how many people were squeezed into my grandparents’ house every Sunday!

And somehow, my grandmother cooked for all of us in that tiny kitchen with her little hands like it was nothing.

There was ALWAYS pasta first with the Sunday gravy. Then her famous salad. Big baskets of Italian bread on the table. And after everybody said they were stuffed? Out came the Italian pastries, cookies, coffee, and cake like the meal had just started.

That was love in an Italian family.

And right in the middle of all that chaos was Grandma Pizzo’s Chicken and Potatoes, bubbling away in giant pans in the oven, smelling so good you couldn’t wait for them to hit the table.

Simple ingredients. Huge flavor. The kind of meal everybody tried to learn how to make but somehow never tasted quite like Grandma’s.

Grandma Pizzo’s Chicken and Potatoes