Well, for my second dish in my Dutch oven, I decided to try some meat. It seemed like roasted chicken parts would be a good idea, so I got a big pack of chicken thighs.
Let me start off by saying that this didn't work out quite like I had hoped. While the end result did taste good and was very tender and juicy, it wasn't really roasted so much as boiled. So in the end there were several lessons learned. If anyone reads this and would like to offer suggestions, I would love to hear them.
Ingredients:
- Pack of chicken thighs
- Paul Prudhomme's Chicken Magic
- 2 Leeks (the meaty end chopped up)
- About 6 cloves of garlic (diced)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 bay leaves
- I started out by removing all of the excess fat and excess skin from the chicken. On a few pieces I removed all of the skin as a test. (In the future I think I will remove all of the skin entirely).
- I sprinkled the chicken which a generous amount of the Chicken Magic.
- I added salt and pepper.
I got my coals going and added 10 to the bottom and 18 to the top, using regular Kingsford charcoal. In hindsight, I still don't this this was enough. It just didn't seem that hot and the coals burned out before I was done. There was a LOT of wind though and that may have contributed to not enough heat.
I added several tablespoons of olive oil to the pot and put in the chicken, skin side down. I thought this might help brown the chicken a little to start with. It did not...
There was really too much chicken also it seems. In the future I will probably only put in as much as can fit without having to stack one on top of another.
After cooking twenty minutes I rearranged the pieces. By this point there was already a lot of liquid in the bottom and the pieces were basically being cooked by boiling. I also added the two bay leaves at this point.
Next time I want to roast chicken, I think I will remove the skin so that it doesn't cook down to so much liquid. And I will try to elevate the chicken on a rack so that the the meat doesn't sit in the liquid.
Here is a shot of the leeks and garlic that I had prepared. I added it after 25 minutes of cook time, as seen in the next photo.
After 40 minutes of cooking they were looking pretty good, but there was still too much liquid, so I removed the chicken, poured out the liquid, and put the chicken back in. The liquid looked like some really good chicken broth, so I saved it for later.
I let it cook for a total of an hour and fifteen minutes. The final product is seen above.
Like I say, it turned out pretty good, but wasn't really what I was shooting for from the beginning. Oh well, live and learn.
3 comments:
Mitch,
I was surfing the web this evening and came across your blog. I love what you have done here. Kudos to you!!! Your Roasted Chicken Thighs recipe looks like a delight and I'm going to try it out this weekend.
I have a few suggestions for you to try to see if they help you deliver more of what you were looking for. It sounds to me by reading your post that you were looking for a little more color on the chicken with a little less fluid in the finished product. This can be accomplished fairly easily in a Dutch oven just by changing the oven and temperature setup.
Try using a larger oven (say a 14") that has more bottom surface area so you can spread the chicken pieces out so they don't touch. Then try using a bit more heat on the oven, for a 14" oven try 22-24 briquettes under the oven and 10-12 on the lid. The bottom heat will help you to brown your chicken pieces rather than boiling them. Make sure to heat the oven up really hot before adding your chicken!
My next suggestion is to use a solid shortening instead of olive oil for browning. Bacon grease or lard work great, or butter can be used if you are very careful with your heat because it will burn easily. The solid shortenings will add beautiful color and will help to sear the skin quickly which is key to sealing fluid into the meat rather than boiling it out of the meat into the oven.
The next step is to dry your chicken pieces as much as possible with paper towels prior to seasoning them to try and keep as much fluid out of the oven as possible. Drier skin will allow you to brown the chicken pieces to a nice color.
Cook the chicken for 2-3 minutes per side until it is nice and golden. Leave the chopped garlic and leeks out for now as these will add fluid to the oven making it harder to brown the chicken. As chicken pieces are browned completely, remove them from the oven to make room for any other pieces you might need to brown.
After all the chicken has been browned add it all back to the oven and add the garlic, leeks, and bay leaves. (Rosemary sprigs or fresh thyme sprigs might also be something to try). Then change the heat setup again to 10-12 coals under the oven and 16-18 on top to finish roasting.
There's a bit more work involved in doing this but the results should be nice.
BTW - You did an awesome job with the hawaiian braided bread. Thanks for using my recipes and posting the pictures!!!
-Byron Bills
a.k.a. PapaDutch
Wow Byron...Thanks for the explanation and advice. Taking the time to write that detailed of a description really means a lot to me. I knew I was missing something in the way of technique. Turns out I was missing a lot. This is some great advice I will have to try out soon.
Oh and thanks for the bread recipe too. The family loved it. In fact, over the Memorial Day weekend we had the in-laws over for dinner. I had some potatoes cooking in the dutch oven. The in-laws began to get all excited when they saw the pot in use. Then when they realized it wasn't Hawaiian bread they threatened to go back home.
- Mitch
Wow! Byron himself posted? That's awesome. You should be honored.
=0)
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