Garlic and thyme chicken leg
When
you start cooking with heritage
chickens, you'll
soon need to figure
out what to do with all that extra leg meat. (You might have a
similar dilemma if you're buying from the store on a budget since legs
are often much cheaper per pound than breasts.) This simple
recipe is surprisingly delicious and takes just a few minutes of
hands-on labor to prepare.
If
you're starting with a whole chicken, first cut off the legs.
You'll be surprised how easy this is --- just slice through the skin
that connects each leg to the
breast, bend the leg sideways until the bone snaps out of its socket,
and then cut through the bit of meat holding the thigh to the rest of
the chicken carcass.
Meanwhile, snip some
thyme leaves out of your garden --- about a
tablespoonful is the goal if you're cooking two chicken legs. Mix
the diced thyme, two tablespoons
of lemon juice, and some salt and 
pepper in a bowl.
Heat a bit of olive oil
over medium-high heat (being careful not to
burn it), then put your chicken legs in the pan, skin side down.
Brush about half of your lemon juice and thyme mixture over top of the
legs and
cook for around five minutes until the skin is brown.
Now turn down the heat
to medium-low and flip the legs over.
Brush on the rest of the lemon juice, leaving some thyme behind in the
bowl, cover the pan, and let cook for 20 or 30 minutes (just enough
time to write a blog post and 
make a salad.) You can
tell the legs are getting
done when the meat starts to pull away from the end of the bone (or you
can use a meat thermometer.)
Remove the legs from the
pan once they're fully cooked and add 1 clove
of minced garlic, the remainder of the thyme, and three tablespoons of
water to the pan. Cook over medium high heat, scraping the
drippings out of the pan and into the water. After a minute or
two, the garlic should be cooked and the water should be evaporated
enough to turn the drippings into a thick sauce to spoon over the legs.
Despite having no
special spices (or MSG), these legs taste very Chinese to us.
Delicious and easy!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Anna,
This recipe for chicken legs sounds great. I will have to try it sometime soon.
Sheila
Changing over to legs is definitely a good cost-cutting measure. There tends to be more fat in the dark meat, though, so it might not be as good for you with supermarket meat. (With pastured meat, I believe that the dark meat is better for you.)
Buying a whole chicken is another good way to cut back meat costs. I can generally turn a whole chicken into at least six meals --- four meals of the meat alone and then another two to six meals of the stock and bits of meat I pick off the bone turned into a delicious vegetable soup.