How to "Chicken"
By: Chef Christopher
For dinner today, I prepared french style chicken legs with an herb butter and paired that with some roasted baby white creamer potatoes. Total time, 25-35 minutes and a dish that was "finger licking good."
You will need the following ingredients:
-Chicken legs
-Fresh or dry herbs of choice
-Butter (Grass fed, organic product)
-High smoke point oil (Peanut, Canola Etc)
-Baby white creamer potatoes (Any potato will work)
-Smoked Paprika (optional)
-Pepper corns
-Kosher salt
Equipment needed:
-Iron Skillet (Higly recommended)
-Stainless steel tongs
-Mixing bowl
-Small to medium sized pot
-Table spoon
-Pepper grinder
Let's get cooking!!!!
Ok so this is not exactly easy to explain without showing but I'll do the best I can. I personally prefer to do a french cut on the chicken legs, but that is not necessary. A french cut is a little more work but can be healthier and will display very nicely. There are a number of sources online which you can use to learn how to do this. I prefer to pull the skin off, you may prefer to keep the skin on. You can butcher the joint, I prefer not to. There are no wrongs or rights only preferences.
Set your oven at 350-400 degrees at this time.
Once your chicken legs are fabricated properly, pat them dry with a paper towel and season all sides with your kosher salt, ground pepper and herbs and set aside as you prepare your potatoes (i'll cover this at the end), and equipment. You will need to charge your pan which in the culinary world means "to heat." This is important because it will close the pores in the metals which you can not see and set an environment for beautiful searing of the chicken. Once your pan is nice and hot (medium high heat for 2-3 minutes depending on your heat source), go ahead and coat the bottom of the pan with your oil. It should only take a few seconds for the oil to get to a point where you can visually see a small amount of smoke. Now you're ready to cook! With the tongs, set each chicken leg in the pan. You should hear a world of sound when the chicken hits the pan, that is exactly what you want. If you don't hear this, pull the chicken back out and wait a minute or two until the pan and oil is hot enough.
Once all the chicken legs are in your skillet, let them sear on one side for a minute or two without touching them (very important). You want the protein to caramelize nicely before turning over. Basically put, the chicken should pull from the pan without any resistance or attachment to the pan before turning over. Not sure if it's time? Tug on the chicken and if it feels even slightly bonded to the pan, leave it.
At this time drop two to three pads of your butter (I use kerrygold), into the pan. Combining a high smoke point oil and butter together will prevent the butter from burning while allowing you to sear at high temperatures and create amazing flavor. When the butter melts into the oil, take your table spoon, tilt the skillet and spoon the butter/oil mix onto the chicken legs. In French culinary, this is called the "arroser" or "to baste." Turn the legs when ready searing on all sides while continuously spooning/basing the tops of each leg until you have beautiful color on all sides. Now remove from the burner and pop your skillet covered into the oven for approximately ten minutes or until each leg has cooked through to 165-170 degrees, (use a thermometer).
Once your chicken is finished, remove the skillet and let sit for a minimum of ten minutes uncovered. Plate your potatoes, then your chicken and spoon some of that amazing roasting juice/butter mix on top and serve with your favorite white wine.
Roasted potatoes:
The first thing I always do when making this dish is to get my potatoes going. Clean, cut in half and drop them into a boiling pot of water salty as seawater. There are going to be many people who disagree with boiling potatoes that you are going to roast. What I suggest is try it, then you will understand why I do this. What you are looking to do is a "par boil," which simply means that you want to cook them approximately half to 3/4 of the way to a full cook. What this does is introduces moisture to the potato so that when you roast them, they don't dry out and still creates a nice crisp to the outside if you roast them appropriately. Once the potatoes are parboiled, drain them and drop them in the mixing bowl. Toss them with extra virgin olive oil, salt to taste, pepper and a little smoked paprika. Drop in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 20 minutes or until you have created the level of crisp you prefer. When I pull the potatoes out, I usually drop them back into the mixing bowl just before serving the meal, and spoon a little of the butter mix from my chicken skillet, toss them in the bowl and serve.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to post any questions you may have! Visit us on Facebook, Twitter or our website www.arizonaeventcatering.com.
-Chef Christopher
