Chicken dishes to tuck into
Regina Murphy
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Chicken. It’s plentiful, fairly inexpensive and versatile.
You can serve the bird whole or cut it into nuggets. You can shred it for enchiladas or dice it for a salad.
It’s cheaper to cut up your own chicken, which for a family of two to four isn’t a bad idea — plenty of meat for a meal, and then a carcass to stew afterwards.
Skinning precut pieces of chicken is easy, too. But if you buy a pack of thighs and find all the skin from the breast tucked underneath, take the meat back to the store and ask for satisfaction. It doesn’t help to save a dollar by buying the skin-on, when you pay for $2 worth of extra skin that you have to discard. Keep them honest!
MAPLE-ROASTED
CHICKEN THIGHS WITH SWEET POTATOES
4 large skinless chicken thighs
2 small (about 1 lb.) sweet
potatoes, peeled and cut into
1-inch chunks
1 small onion, cut into 1-inch pieces
8 oz. carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks
8 oz. parsnips, cut into
1-inch chunks
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place the chicken, sweet potato chunks, onion, baby carrots and parsnips in a large shallow roasting pan. Stir together the maple syrup, salt and pepper, pour this over the meat and vegetables and toss to coat.
Roast for 40 to 45 minutes or until juices run clear when the thigh is pierced. Stir the vegetables once or twice and turn the chicken over halfway through roasting. Serve with rice or couscous to catch the juices and you’ll have a sweet, filling meal.
VVV
Of course, grilling things takes most of the mess outside, so a grilled chicken and pear salad might be just the thing for your next cookout.
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