Hello friends,
The concept of roasting has peaked my interest in this approach to cooking. Roasting chicken legs seemed like a good project for today. Rescuing a package of chicken legs from our freezer and thawing them out was step one. The next problem was how to get them ready for roasting. Which will work the best; Dry salting; brining; or using a marinade? The Roasted Butterflied Chicken used the dry salting with great success. Therefore, this time dry salting was used. (Bad Choice)
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The package of chicken legs thawed out. There were twelve in the packaged all were used. Since this was an experiment only half of the package should have been used. (Another Bad Choice)
It was after the chicken legs had been salted and seasoned, that the recipe for roasting chicken legs was found on page 319 of the All About Roasting book by Molly Stevens where she used a marinade. That approach will be used next time. Molly’s recipe was called Tandoori-style Roasted Chicken Legs, The word Tandoori threw me, I did not know what it meant.
Here the legs were ready to be put in the refrigerator (uncovered) for about 24 hours although for just legs, six hour would be enough time.
This was after the attempt at searing the legs. Not was very successful.
The final results, I thought they were very tasty, but my wife felt they were not roasted enough.
The second method of preparing the chicken legs was Wet Salting or more commonly called brining. Soaking the meat in a salt and sugar water solution does the same thing as dry salting but adds a little moisture to the meat which waters down the flavor. In All About Roasting, the time suggested for brining was one to two days. Cook’s Illustrated magazine provides a super brining method which only needs thirty minutes.
Lastly, by using the marinade method, little salt is added but a lot of flavor. The marinating time is only four hours. This is the method I will use next time.
Dry Salted Roasted Chicken Legs (Rejected Recipe)
Inspired by the book All About Roasting and our oldest Son
Serves Four
This approach is good if you are not concerned about sodium intake. The recipe below is really a failed work and will be modified as the experiment continues. The skin was left on the chicken legs because of the fantastic results experienced with the Butterflied Roasted Chicken that our son provided.
Ingredients:
kosher salt ( because of it’s texture: coarse to medium grain sea salt will work)
coarse ground black pepper
Adobe (Penzeys Spices)*
about 5 pounds of chicken legs with skin (at room temperature)
Fresh rosemary
*Adobe contents: onion, garlic,black pepper,oregano, cumin and cayenne pepper.
Directions:
- Mix together the black pepper and Adobe seasoning.
- Rub the seasoning mixture onto the chicken legs.
- Line one or two jelly roll pans with aluminum foil (easier cleanup)
- Place cooling rack in (or on) the lined jelly roll pan(s)
- Sprinkle the fresh rosemary onto the chicken legs.
- Refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours ( for this experiment and time requirements 30 hours was needed)
- Preheat the oven to 450℉ (for searing the legs) allow 30 minutes to heat up the oven.
- Roast at 450℉ for ten minutes
- Reduce heat to 375℉ and continue roasting for ten minutes.
- Again reduce the heat to 350℉ and continue roasting until an instant read thermometer reads 180 to 190 ℉ eat the thick part of the leg (but not touching the bone).
Now it was time to critique the above experiment. There was attempt to mimic the process used in the Roasted Butterflied Chicken recipe.
Nothing really worked: The following mistakes were made;
- Leaving the skins.
- Lowering the searing temperature to 450℉ from the suggested 500℉.
- Roasting only to 180℉ instead of continuing to 190℉
- Forgetting that my wife (Cyndy) doesn’t like to eat chicken legs unless they are cooked to death.
Next time I will follow more closely the recipe from All About Roasting, by Molly Stevens on page 319. It will be awhile before the recipe for Roasted Chicken Legs will be attempted again. But as General Mac Arthur said as he was driven out of the Philippines during WWII; ”I shall return.”
Á bientôt,
Mr Nut
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