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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Roasted Chicken



Since I'd come across this recipe a couple weeks ago, I have been itching to try it. The ingredients aren't extreme or numerous, basically pretty simple, allowing me to believe it will be "simply" delicious. Har, har, har! Ahem.

The reason for postponing a sooner prep of this recipe was because of the ginger juice. Yes, ginger juice. Ginger JUICE? Say what? What'd you say? Ginger? JUICE?

The original recipe calls for four large "marylands", which turns out to be leg quarters. Easy enough. The original recipe also called for a 30 minute marinade. 30 minutes? With these miniscule quantities? Say what? What'd you say?

When finally getting around to doing the recipe, I allowed an overnight marinade. If I'm going to marinate some chicken, I'm going to marinate some chicken, especially since I'd squeezed juice from a ginger root!

Finally, since it was day time and thus daylight was plentiful when I prepared the chicken for marinading, I'm going to include as many of those photos as possible. Even though I don't have a print option...yet.

Roasted Chicken
adapted from Quinn's Cooking With Love & Passion!

4 large whole chicken legs
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp ginger juice
1 tsp five-spice powder
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp light soy sauce

In a large bowl, add salt, white pepper and five-spice powder.


Then grate about 1-2" of ginger root and squeeze the grated material of it's juices into the large bowl. And then add soy sauce.


Combine salt, pepper, five-spice powder, ginger juice and soy sauce before adding and mixing in chicken legs, aka Marylands.


Cover chicken with plastic wrap and keep in the refrigerator overnight, turning once if you remember.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Drain the chicken and roast in the oven for about 30 minutes.


Rotate baking sheet 180° to ensure even browning; roast chicken an additional 20 minutes.


Let chicken stand for 10 minutes, loosely covered with foil.


And eat.


Squeezing juice from a ginger root isn't difficult at all! I look forward to squeezing more ginger juice from roots in the future. Marinating overnight wasn't necessary as I don't believe it imparted serious flavor throughout the flesh, though it was convenient. The chicken tasted really good, but was primarily of five-spice, where I'd hoped to have more of a ginger flavor. After all, I squoze ginger juice for this dish.

All-in-all, a crispy-skinned, flavorful recipe worth doing again.

Cost:
  • chicken legs: $2.73
  • ginger root: $0.33
  • everything else, SWAG: $1
Total: $4.06 or about a buck for each of four servings.

4 comments:

Quinn said...

Hey,

Thanks for the linkback and I am so glad you like it. It's simple enough isn't it? The charred bits of your chicken is killing me too! You've got some great photos too, seriously.

Thanks for willing to try the recipes I posted in my blog. People might blog because they're desperate or have good photos or for whatever reason but I blog about them because they're worth every mention.

The Cook said...

No problem about the link-back, Quinn, it only makes sense to give credit where it's due. Plus if I botch the recipe, I'd like what readers I have to go to the original recipe and try it first-hand themselves!

As for my photos. Stop it already! You're being polite -- my kitchen is a dungeon, extremely shy of light and it just so happened that I prepared this recipe during the day on a weekend. So that's that.

As for the chicken, I really like how the recipe is quite versatile, allowing for folks like me to be flexible with what typically ranks as most important: time, and secondly, simplicity.

You might be more scrupulous than I regarding what you post as I will post everything regardless of the outcome. However, I very rarely do anything unless I have a script in hand and I have it easy that way. I can just blame you original thinkers!

Seriously, I do enjoy knowing that you and your blog aren't out for merely award-winning posts and/or photos, that the recipes are REAL!

I will be back for more!

Laura said...

Despite how easy you make it sound, I can't see myself ever making ginger juice. I actually bought a jar of minced ginger in water specifically so I don't have to deal with ginger root. I'm lazy! :)

The Cook said...

It really was a very easy. I'd thought it would be like squeezing blood from a turnip, but grating the ginger root let the juices flow.