My life got better when I started buying chicken thighs instead of breasts,
most of the time. In my opinion, the thigh is a far tastier quick weeknight protein,
and it's far easier to cook successfully. We're gonna talk about shopping, butchering,
different cooking methods, but first temperature.
Thighs do not cook the same as breasts. The breast is mostly fast-twitch muscle fiber,
for sudden explosive effort. This has way more slow-twitch fiber, for sustained,
low-level effort, like standing around. That chicken is standing on its legs and thighs
and its breast isn't doing anything because chickens don't really fly.
This thigh muscle has to work a little, all day long. So it's a different kind of muscle fiber,
it's better vascularized — meaning it's full of blood vessels big and small,
it's got more fat in and around it, and it has more connective tissue to keep it all together.
It's a different substance, so it cooks differently.
But for this demonstration I'm gonna cook it like you would cook breast — real hot,
real fast and until a thermometer shows the minimum safe internal temperature for poultry,
which officially is 165ºF/74ºC. I usually cook breast a little less than that,
but there, for the sake of argument, 165ºF/74ºC
Pull it out. That was in for 10 minutes. Let it rest a few minutes more, and then slice.
If we had cooked breast to this temperature it would either be dry or on the verge of dry.
This thigh is not dry, not in the least. And it tastes ok, but it's a little tough and
it's really slimy. The toughness is connective tissue that hasn't had much chance to dissolve,
and the sliminess is fat that hasn't had much time to render,
or melt. Thighs cooked to breast temperatures are kinda gross, IMHO. They're slimy.
Let's do this again. The first thing I'll do is lower my temperature just
a little bit. This is just south of medium on my stove.
You cook it a little slower, you give that fat more time to melt. Fat melts at a lower
temperature than the heat at which meat cooks. And whether the skin is on or off,
I think you don't want to try to move or flip chicken until it releases very easily, like that.
And you may think the skin isn't dark enough yet. Maybe it's not. We can give
it some more heat once the bottom side is ready to release. But I think skin
starts to taste burned at lighter colors than meat does, so go easy on the skin.
The bottom side is about ready to release. Chicken is just so much more delicate than beef,
so you really have to let the outside solidify before you can move it around, otherwise it'll
stick to the pan and shred apart when you try to move it. We're seared on all sides now, so I can
flip this kinda constantly, which I think is the best way. It cooks a little faster when you flip
frequently and you can keep an eye on everything. Nothing is gonna burn without you knowing it.
Juice is starting to pool on the surface,
which is one of those clear signals that the inside of meat is getting cooked.
When I poke it, it doesn't feel squishy inside anymore. It feels bouncy. All good signs.
Now, let's take its temperature. And I'ma take it way past 165. There's 175, which I'd consider the
minimum for chicken dark meat. But I really like to take it all the way to 185ºF/85ºC.
Sometimes I let it go even higher than that. That was in the pan for 13 minutes.
Is it gonna be dry? I dunno, does this look dry to you? Chicken breast cooked this hot would be
the texture of chalk. This is actually more succulent than the thigh we cooked
20 degrees cooler. And it's more tender. This is because more of
the collagen in the connective tissue has dissolved into sticky delicious gelatin,
and more of the fat has melted — so it's more moist and less slimy. That is so good.
And to make it dinner you could just make a little pan sauce. I'll soak up any burned oil in that pan
and deglaze with whatever liquid I see in the fridge, which today is cranberry juice. Sure.
Dissolve the solids at the bottom of the pan, reduce the liquid until syrupy, turn the heat off,
and when it's barely bubbling anymore, drop in some butter. Just barely melt that in,
maybe throw in some parsley leaves, and there — pan sauce.
I usually like to use alcoholic beverages for pan sauce because a lot of the sugar has been
metabolized by the yeast. When you reduce down juice it tends to be super sweet. Yeah, that's too
sweet, but you could use juice + water, or water + a little sweet vinegar, all kinds of things.
Anyway, that's a tasty dinner, in part because it's my favorite way of butchering chicken thigh.
We'll talk about that right after I tell you about the maker of this fine
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OK. So here's the three basic ways you can buy standalone chicken thighs. This one is skin-on,
bone in. There, that's the chicken's femur in there — the thigh bone. That's the whole,
intact thigh. Here's boneless — the bone taken out, the skin still on.
That's what we've been cooking so far. And here is boneless, skinless. That's obviously gonna
be the most expensive. That butchering is done by hand, even in big factories.
Let's cook them side-by-side. A little oil, pepper and salt, smoosh everything around. Intact,
boneless, boneless skinless. In the oven at like 375ºF/190ºC, any temperature in that
neighborhood. Half an hour later, they look like this. Internal temperature is — whoa, real hot,
but that's fine. Thighs are bulletproof. You can way overcook them and they'll still be good.
In fact I'm gonna turn on my broiler/grill to brown the tops a little bit more.
Much nicer. Thighs are great for sheet-pan dinners. I'm gonna take out the deboned ones
and let the bone-in thigh cook a little longer, just to put it on equal footing.
It's bigger, it's thicker, it just needs a little more time.
That was like 45 minutes total — much slower than the pan, but way easier. That boneless skinless
thigh I probably cooked to like 210ºF/99ºC, and it's still pretty soft and juicy and tasty.
Thighs are bulletproof. Boneless and skin on — way tastier, in my opinion. Listen to that crisp skin.
Unlike breasts, you can cook thighs to the point where most
of the subcutaneous fat has rendered out and the skin is totally crisp. Awesome.
The bone-in thigh. It's easy to eat when you go for this part here, and that indeed is very tasty,
except for that spot of skin I burned on
the top. Bits of burned meat can be kinda good — burned skin is gross.
Once you start cutting in here, you run into that bone and it just
gets to be hard to eat around. And there's some grossness — some big hunks of cartilage,
some slimy blood vessels and tendons. Certainly easier to eat if you just pick it up,
but the area around the bone is honestly at little undercooked and under-flavored.
Thing is, it's easy to buy thighs totally intact, it's easy to buy them bone-less skinless,
but it can be hard to find them skin-on, bone out. So let's talk about boning them out ourselves.
I was reading this article in Poultry Science as one does about a new method of
deboning chicken — dislocation of articular cartilage followed by stripping periosteum.
The articular cartilage is the stuff on either ends of the femur, where the hip and knee joints
were. According to the article, you cut through the cartilage, pull it off the bone and then just
pull the meat down — strip the periosteum, which is the tissue connecting the meat
to the sides of the bones. I could not make that work. Let me know if you can!
Here's my method, which is crude but real easy. If you have one, use a boning knife,
which is a very thin blade. You can get them for cheap, because they're stamped,
not forged. Stamping out of sheet steel is cheaper than forging it like you'd do for chef's knife.
One cut down the middle right on top of the bone. Then one cut down along the side of the bone,
but not all the way through to the board. Just as deep as the bone. Same cut on the other side. And
I'm not worrying about the ends of the bone near the joints. Just the middle section of the bone.
Now I can very carefully slide my knife up underneath the middle of the bone,
like that. In, under and out the other side. Saw a little bit to make a bigger
hole — big enough that you can stick your finger through and peak it out the other side. Hello!
Now, get the knife in there again facing away from your finger and saw out, saw out until you
can push it all the way through and there's one joint free. The other end is easier,
I just kinda lever the bone away and cut around that joint until it's free. Done.
There's some waste, but like I said, this is easy — it's neither fast nor best, but
that's a perfect thing to freeze for stock. Now, around where the joints were there will
be little bits of cartilage. Those are gross. Feel around for them and slice them off. There will
also be a few little bits of blubbery fat that won't render down all the way when you cook them.
They'll be slimy and gross. They should be right around the edge on the skin, just trim them off.
There's that flap of skin hanging off the side. Not all butchers give that to you, but this one
did. I trim it off, mostly because right where it meets the meat there's another blubbery bit
of fat hanging out just under the skin. Tends to be slimy, you can cut it or even scrape it off.
Beautiful. That meat is now of super even thickness so it's gonna cook evenly,
it's thin so it's gonna cook quickly and you can flavor more of it, and that skin is gonna
be crispy and delicious. But say you don't want the skin. Lift it up, and you might need
to reach in with your knife and open up the membrane underneath, then you can just pull
it off until you can't anymore. At that point, I just start cutting and off it comes. Easy.
I prefer skinless boneless for most wet-cooking methods, like stews.
These make an insanely quick and tasty stew. I'll just cut a couple thighs into chunks,
remembering the chunks are gonna shrink in half as they cook.
Into the oiled pan, season, and keep them moving to keep them from sticking to the pan or each
other. Just stir stir stir until they're basically cooked — brown on the outside,
and just about cooked through on the inside. Maybe in with some sliced shallots,
fry those a little bit, and then time to deglaze with my ol' buddy white wine — so
good for chicken stew. And I reckon baby carrots or big chunks of adult carrots
will cook in the same time it takes for that meat to go soft. Cover and reduce to a simmer.
Check on it every now and then just to make sure nothing is sticking and the
liquid isn't all evaporating. If it is, I'd supplement with water,
not more wine. Too much reduced wine will be really strong.
Here we are like half an hour later, everything is tender. Let's thicken and enrich that with a
little cream. Super Frenchy, this stew is. Simmer the cream until thick. Taste for seasoning and
add anything it needs, like salt. Drop in some fresh thyme or other herb. And you could have
that over egg noodles or rice or something, or you could just put it in a bowl, maybe mop up
the sauce with crusty bread. Thigh meat is so much more succulent in stews than breast meat.
But let's finish with the easiest option. You can totally just throw the whole, intact thigh
into a pot, brown both sides just to create some flavor in there, throw in whatever vaguely Latin
American seasonings you have, fry them a sec, then just about cover everything with water.
Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pot, and wait maybe an hour until the meat feels like you
could easily pull it off the bone. Pull those out and let them cool until you can handle them.
Meanwhile, you could drop some veggies in here to make a soup, or you could do what
I usually do which is boil this down to a glaze. You don't need to stir it until
it gets really thick — that's when it could stick and burn. Because we left the skin on,
we dissolved a lot of gelatin out of it. That sauce is gonna be luscious as it is, but you
could augment it with a little vinegar or other acid, maybe a little honey or other sweetener,
and that's a super tasty coasting for this chicken that we'll now pull off and shred.
When he skin is cooked wet, I think it's kinda gross and I don't actually want to
eat it. Take it off. As you pull meat off the bone note the articular cartilage at
the ends of the bone where the joints were. Nobody wants to bite into that. And you can
easily pull it off now that everything is cooked soft. Some people debone and shred
chicken with forks. I think that's crazy. If you use your fingers you can feel for
the bits of cartilage or un-rendered fat or anything else you don't want to eat.
And if you're gonna be tossing this in a sauce, don't shred it all the way. It'll shred more as
you stir it in the sauce. Hey, there, I don't know if that's a tendon or a blood vessel but
I felt that it was slimy so I can take it out. In that sauce it goes. For my taste,
I wish I had reduced that glaze a little thicker, but that's still gonna make for
a darn tasty taco with some green stuff on top and a squeeze of lime to boot.
I am a thigh man, all day long.