There's a way of cutting chicken legs that transforms them into a really delicious and
fancy finger food.
The result is reminiscent of a Frenched rack of lamb, but at a tiny fraction of the cost.
And way it's easier to do.
I've got just under 5 pounds of chicken drumsticks here, 2 kilos.
I think this technique works better with smaller ones, if you can get them.
I'd figure three or four small legs per person.
My cut chicken is gonna go in this roasting pan and my trimmings will go in a skillet.
Step one: grab the chicken by it's calf muscle.
That's what that is.
And then, maybe a third of the way up from the ankle, cut all the way down to the shinbone,
and rotate the leg as you saw.
Saw through all of the meat and the little tendons that are in there until you've circumnavigated
the bone.
Then use the knife to scrape the meat off the bone, up toward the ankle.
If there's anything you failed to cut through, it will reveal itself now.
Push everything down as far as you can around the ankle joint.
Then position the belly of your knife right under the joint there.
Take your other hand, and smack the spine of the knife, clean through the bone.
Nice.
You're gonna see some blood in the cut bone.
Not whole blood, because it doesn't have plasma.
But red and white blood cells and platelets are all made in bone borrow, so there it is.
I'll show you that one more time.
Grab the leg by the meaty end.
Cut straight to the bone, right where the meat starts to bulge out.
Saw as you spin the bone.
There are ropy tendons in there that can be hard to cut through and I find the sawing
motion helps get them.
But you still might miss one — no problem.
See, what we're scraping away here is the least appetizing part of the drumstick anyway.
It's the thin, stringy part.
Set the knife right above the ankle, and this is like karate chopping through boards.
It only works if you do it with full confidence.
Don't hold back.
If you shattered the bone at all, try to get rid of any shards.
They're real sharp.
Beautiful meat with a clean bone in the tray, discarded ankle in the pan.
We'll make our sauce with those.
Once you get the hang of this, you can blast through the job pretty quickly.
Just take your time when it comes to hacking through the bone.
If the knife can cut through a chicken tibia it can cut though one of your fingers, no
problem.
Fun fact: chickens do have a fibula bone, the smaller bone that runs parallel to the
tibias in our shins.
But in birds, for some reason, the fibula is teeny tiny, almost like a splinter.
You might not even see it, because it doesn't even go all the way down to the ankle, except
on penguins.
OK, enough salt and pepper to season every surface really well.
And then I like a light dusting of cornstarch for this particular recipe.
Just a little.
It helps the skin get extra crispy and then it helps the glaze to adhere later on.
Get that all tossed and coated.
A little oil to grease everything.
Be careful as you're tossing these around, because the end of the bones are real pointy.
You could stick yourself.
Into the oven at 400F/200C, convection if you've got it.
We'll check on those again in an hour.
Meanwhile, we can make a quick stock with all this bone and skin.
Toss in a little oil just get them browning.
I'm on medium heat, and I'll just let those get nice and golden.
Over here I've got a couple bunches of green onions.
Out of the upper-middle portion, I will cut some thin slices at a pretty angle.
I'ma garnish my plates with these at the end.
The middle there is the part that tastes pretty good raw.
Throw those in a bowl and save for later.
The bottoms and the tops I'll just roughly slice up and use for my stock.
I'll also grab a few garlic cloves, smash and peel.
It's all getting strained out, so no need to chop pretty.
Give those ankles a stir — no worries if the good brown stuff sticks to the pan.
We'll dissolve it in minute.
It'll seem like the veg isn't gonna fit, but give it a second to cook down, and it will.
Keep stirring — get some brown on everything.
Not too much — I've definitely been too aggressive about this kind of browning in
the past and you end up getting some burned notes in your sauce.
That's good enough.
I'll make some room and squeeze in a little tomato paste.
Stir and brown that a bit.
And then you know it's time for half a bottle of white wine, though you could certainly
just use water.
I'll scrape the bottom of the pan real good.
This is not necessary, but I've got some cheap dried mushrooms, so I'll throw those in, just
for flavor.
And then top off with enough water to submerge.
A little salt and pepper to start with, bring the whole thing to a boil, reduce to a spirited
simmer.
And uh, yeah, now I've got a moment of me time.
I'm trying get myself back shape, and the good thing about kitchens is they almost all
have a place where you can do dips.
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And I'll need some carbs to power those workouts.
So into about a quart of salted boiling water I'll whisk a cup of cornmeal, 150g.
I'm making polenta today, though mashed potatoes would be great instead.
That's just under a liter of water in there, which probably isn't enough, but you can always
add more later.
Take the heat all the way down on that, cover and just let it sit for at least a half hour.
Let's roast some carrots with the chicken.
I've got like two pounds of these beautiful tri-color carrots, on the small side.
So, the little ones I'll just roast whole.
Long ones I'll cut in half.
Long and thick ones, I'll cut in half and then bisect the thicker top end.
Just under a kilo of carrots there.
God, I love carrots.
The chicken legs I've roasted for an hour.
They're cooked, you could eat them, but I want them to be really soft and crispy.
Dark meat you can "overcook" and it basically braises itself.
It just gets softer and, I think, better.
Now that everything it released, I'll make some room at the other end of the tray and
dump in the carrots.
It's totally fine if they're all piled up on each other.
A little drizzle of oil on those and a pinch of salt.
Toss toss, and then I don't want the chicken piled up on itself.
I want each one to brown, so I've got the meat spread in a single layer.
Back this goes to roast for another half hour.
My quick stock has been simmering for just under an hour.
I topped it off with extra water once or twice.
No need to get it reduced.
Time to strain.
Sieve in a bowl, dump everything in, really squeeze the stuff with the spoon to get all
that delicious juice out.
Discard the solids, and give the pan a quick rinse, just to get rid of any chunks.
That was a quick stock, but still, check out all the gelatin.
Nice.
Back in the pan, bring to a simmer.
From here, I'm following the Chinese-American restaurant playbook.
Soy sauce, honey or any sugar, vinegar, and corn starch.
I'll dump a couple tablespoons of starch in here, a tiny splash of water, and then just
use my finger to work out any lumps, get all the starch granules dispersed.
If you don't start with a smooth slurry, it's gonna clump.
Stir briskly as you drizzle that in — that was too fast.
I'm gonna have some lumps now.
Drizzle slower than I did.
I certainly won't use all that slurry, but it's nice to have extra so you can adjust.
Bring it to a simmer, it'll thicken right up.
Cornstarch will get me the shiny, glossy vibe I'm after today.
I'll splash in some soy sauce.
You could use Worcestershire.
Or you could just use salt, but I like the darker color.
A splash of any vinegar you like, or you could use lemon juice.
Summon forth the upside down bear, or use corn syrup, or just plain sugar.
A lot — this gonna be a glaze, not a sauce.
There will be proportionally very little of it on each bite, so it should taste way too
strong on its own.
I think it needs a little more salt, so I'll give it some more soy sauce.
And at this stage, it should look a little too thin.
It's gonna thicken a ton by the time we actually eat it.
This was too thick — I had to water it down later.
My carrots are like 2/3rds cooked, which is how I want them.
They got a half hour in the oven, the legs got 90 minutes.
Any more than that and they'd get too soft — they'd fall of the bone.
Nice blond color on those — dark brown on chicken skin tastes burned, imho.
And into the pool.
A nice first coat of glaze on each of these.
If you glaze them one at a time, you can be gentle and avoid knocking the meat off the
bone, plus you can keep that upper handle of bone nice and clean.
This is a finger food, after all.
This first coat of glaze will kinda harden, and then you can give them a second coat right
before you eat, resulting in a lacquered effect.
They're way too hot to eat right now.
They can just sit there on low and keep warm.
Until we're ready.
The polenta is super soft and creamy.
I'll drop in a few tablespoons of butter to enrich it.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
You could cheese if you wanted.
And whisk in more water if you want, keeping in mind it'll firm up a lot as it cools.
The carrots need a little more cooking, and there's lots of great flavor in that tray,
so, turn on the heat, throw in a little water, scrape as much brown stuff off the bottom
as possible, let the carrots soften to exactly the tenderness you desire as you reduce that
liquid down to a glaze.
Gorgeous.
Vegetables tend to go cold before everything else does, which is one reason I try to finish
with them.
Actually, everything is sitting in warm pans right now, which would make this a great buffet-style
meal for a small gathering.
People can just swing by and serve themselves.
I'll get some of that polenta on my plate.
A few of those glazed carrots.
And the chicken I'll give one final glazing before I set it on my plate.
Sprinkle on some green onions.
And basically that's wings, but fancier and way meatier.
The meat pulls away from the bone real easy, most of the yucky sinew is just gone, and
you can't go wrong with carrots roasted in chicken fat.
A dozen chicken legs, strip the lower tibias and cut off the ankles.
Season them with salt, pepper, a very thin dusting of cornstarch.
Toss with oil, put in the roasting pan, ideally with the bones sticking straight up.
Roast at 400F.
Put the chicken scraps in a pan with some oil and brown them.
Take two bunches of green onions, cut off enough for garnish, throw the rest in with
the chicken to brown.
Throw in some crushed garlic cloves.
Brown a squeeze of tomato paste, deglaze with water or white wine, get everything just submerged.
Salt and pepper.
Maybe dried mushrooms and/or a New Mexico chili?
Simmer.
Get a cup of soft polenta started, probably a quart of water, big pinch of salt.
Cut a pound of carrots into big pieces.
When the chicken legs are mostly cooked (30-45 min), scrape them off the pan, toss in the
carrots.
Keep roasting until the carrots are almost cooked.
Strain the sauce.
Put it back in the pan, add some vinegar and honey, maybe some soy sauce, season.
Make a cornstarch slurry, get the sauce really really thick.
Heat off.
Take the tray out of the oven, put the legs into the sauce.
Give them a preliminary glazing.
While they cool, deglaze the roasting pan with a splash of water, finish cooking and
glaze the carrots.
Give the chicken a second glazing.
Polenta on the plate, chicken on top, carrots on the side, garnish with reserved green onions.