How To "Chicken" (French Style Chicken Legs)

How to "Chicken"
By: Chef Christopher

Inexpensive cuts of meat well prepared is all the craze these days. With food prices not exactly what they were ten years ago, we find home cooks and chefs alike working with proteins that are more affordable using techniques and recipes fashionable and delicious.

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  

Arizona Wedding Catering And Bartending Services

Arizona weddings and other special events are made easier on you the host when bringing three important vendors together into one contract, one point of contact.

Arizona Event Catering specializes in weddings with an emphasis in Italian, French and Spanish cuisine, greatly experienced services such as banquet servers, cocktail servers and bartenders which are borrowed from our sister company Portable Pubs, LLC.

Arizona Event Catering proudly owns and operates Portable Pubs, LLC (http://www.portablepubsaz.com) a bartending service for private and public events. Working hundreds of weddings each year since it's inception, Portable Pubs has built a reputation for providing real bartenders from valley bars and clubs while giving the bar a real bar feeling all around.


Bundling your dinner catering with a bar package from Portable Pubs not only takes a lot off your wedding "to do" list, but saves you money as well. Discounts on packaging your catering with a full bar package are available to all types of events. Don't need a full bar package but still need catering? With 100 guests or more, your bartender will come free with portable bar, napkins, straws, fruit, tools and portable bar. 


Arizona Event Catering does provide a limited array of rentals for parties. However, we have a personal history extending 16 years with owner/partner Michael Black of Affordable Party Rentals in Tempe, Arizona. Mike and partner Bob are brothers and have been in this business for a long time. For our hosts, we provide the rental quotes, the order handling, the contracts and payment collections. The price you would pay if you contacted Affordable Party Rentals yourself, is the price you will pay with us. 


It most definitely can be a difficult and time consuming process to plan and execute a great wedding or party. Now it's become quite a bit easier by having one meeting for 3 vendors. A quote can be accomplished in 30 minutes from contact, a tasting withing 5 days in which your entire event can be organized including dinner, bar and rentals. 

Arizona Event Catering welcomes it's newest addition to the team, chef Benjamin Romine. Benjamin brings a whole new level of skill sets to our line up not only in his passion for the culinary arts, but in his degree in culinary arts, experience in a gourmet French kitchen and executive position in an up scale Italian cuisine as well. Oh, did we forget to mention his experience as a sous chef for an up scale Mexican cuisine?

About the owner:

Owner/operator and executive chef Christopher has been blessed with over twenty years of restaurant and catering experience. Beginning with his families Italian restaurants as a prep worker and dishwasher he worked his way into serving, bartending and management. During his four years at ASU he ventured into corporate restaurants and bars serving, bartending and managing with the purpose of a structured environment. Eventually working with bartending services and caterers he found a love for the event business. This well rounded experience coupled with his families successful recipes in the Italian cuisine has helped Arizona Event Catering obtain a reputation for serving great Italian cuisine at hundreds of weddings, birthday parties, public events and more.

Why a new chef?

While Chef Chris brings experience in the wedding and catering business which feels more like a professional and organized restaurant operation brought to your special event, Chef Ben brings a whole new level of culinary skill sets, quality control and regional flavors to our menu we wouldn't have without him. Not to mention the fact that he's an all around great guy and pleasure to work with.

"Ben was the catalyst in turning something good, into something great. I thought I could pull some stuff off and wow some people and have done so on many occasions....but he wows me constantly. I could not be happier with working with Ben in so many ways."  -Christopher Fisher


Chef Ben has been working with us for about six months now and we could not be more excited for the up coming season to see just what else he has in store for our guests. It's exciting to say the least!

Corporate Party Catering

As wedding season approaches and the catering companies are filled to the gills with weddings, it's common place for event planners to find difficulty in searching for a catering company available to work events such as award ceremonies, benefits and more. Weekday meetings are easy, most caterers will retain weekday availability during wedding season, but weekends are generally booked for most of us. Consider in stead, a week day event when the purpose is business or community oriented.

Is it plausible to schedule your benefit event or awards ceremony on a weekday, rather than on the weekend? We would like to think so and it just may offer you some benefits you may not realize till now. Most facilities which are rent-able, generally are less expensive to rent during the weekdays and on Sundays. We are all on a budget here especially considering the weakened economy, so this is one strong beneficial case in point.

Secondly, most catering companies will offer better pricing during the week. This is a simple case of supply and demand. We still have basic price points to keep us financially afloat, but rest assured you will find your total bill to be less than that of a weekend event. Once again, a credit to the budget for you event planners.

Last but not least, if you are planning an event in which the budgets success is dependent upon the number of guests and based on ticket sales, we believe that it's target attendees may have a better availability potential during the week, rather than on the weekends where the general public look to find family gatherings, weekend excursions, shopping adventures or simple in house rest after a long week.  

In general, it's going to be much easier to find a caterer, or any vendor for that matter, who is available for your event during the week. Couple that with lower associated costs and you can't loose. We have a few solutions up our sleeve that may be of interest to you event planners and are more than happy to talk about it any any time. 

On Site Saute Catering

This weekend Chef David and Chef Chris catered a Christmas party for the Warner Estates community in Tempe, Arizona. What we offered for this event was a pasta bar in which we sauteed fresh dishes right in front of the guests. We offered different pasta choices with 3 sauces (Garlic cream, a vodka sauce and marinara). As well, we offered a variety of veggies such as peas, artichokes, sauteed mushrooms, fresh basil and fresh parsley. This was our first event offering an on-site-saute/pasta bar and our guests were awed by the uniqueness of this style of catering. So much so, that we felt it necessary to tell people about it.

The concept is most definitely in it's infancy and as any good caterer will tell you, every event is a lesson in which you grow and better yourself as part of the staff, and as a company. We will be offering this to our future event hosts and simply can not wait to do it again.

We had a great time working this event and were very happy with how it turned out. Our staff showed up to the in the requested 30's Hollywood theme attire slinging cocktails at the bar and our severs carried party trays with fresh bruschetta served on freshly baked crostinis drizzled with a balsamic reduction. Vodka and wine lit the pans up in flames with these delicious Italian dishes which over and over again were received in the highest of gratitude.
   
         "I grew up in this neighborhood and I know it's people well. I feared that it would be
          difficult to please them as their taste is exquisite, refined and well established. However,
         to my honest surprise, they loved every bite of what we gave them. It was beyond a 
         relief, a success, it was why I love what I do." -Chef Christopher 

Thank you to the community for having us and we very much look forward to doing more events like this in the future. If you would like to talk to the chef about an on-site-saute for your event, visit the website and call us today. www.arizonaeventcatering.com.

Welcome Chef David Keithline

Arizona Event Catering would like to welcome aboard Chef David Keithline, a twenty year veteran of the restaurant industry and a gentleman with a pure passion for the culinary arts and quality products.

Dave is a familiar face for founder Chef Chris as they worked together in his families Italian Cuisine for a few years. Dave was the Sioux Chef for Giardano's Italian Cuisine for 7 years, pulling a great deal of influence from owner/executive Chef Ron. Giardano's closed it's doors for personal reasons and soon afterwards, Dave was taken aboard as Executive Chef of Va Bene Italian Cuisine and has been there ever since.

Chef Dave and Chef Chris share the same passion for using only the finest quality of products prepared with the utmost care. Now that Chef  Dave has been working our events with us, he now equally shares Chris' love for bringing that restaurant experience to special events.

"It's like a new restaurant adventure within each and every event. As the food heads off to the site, I feel like I'm sending the first table of plates off on opening day." -David Keithline


Exactly Dave.....that's why we do this and that's exactly why we love what we do. Welcome aboard and we very much look forward to exciting things to come.

Catered Event In October - Gilbert, AZ

October events are my personal favorite because October in Arizona is a month which spells relief from the summer heat, direct sunlight and moody drivers. Yes, it's a proven fact that drivers in Arizona are far more irritable when temperatures raise above 100 degrees!

However, as a chef and events specialist, it's a time to embrace the cooler air and the fall harvest which is full of great produce with magnificent colors. And I like Halloween, it's just a fun time for everyone.

As our culinary delights are event based, we like the idea of using the season to carve our menu and decorate our banquet tables. Something we have never tried before but like the sound of. However, what sounds good to me, does not sound good to everyone and I would sure love to hear what anyone has to say about it.