Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Cooking Chicken and Potatoes


You know some of my friends have never even tried to cook chicken that has skin, bones and is dark meat. I am pretty sure my mom never cooked anything like that while I was growing up. This all just seems to weird to me because not only are these the cheapest, tastiest pieces of metat but they are also the hardest to screw up. The worst thing and yet the easiest thing o do to a piece of chicken is to over cook it leaving with you dry unappetizing chicken. Dark meat chicken is pretty darn hard to overcook though since its natural juiciness keeps the chicken moist longer in the oven reducing your chances of overcooked dry kitchen. Heck, I didn't even have to use any oil on my chicken I just threw them onto a pan, sprinkled some spices on top and popped them into the oven at 400 for 90 minutes. Halfway through I took the chicken out and spooned some of the fat that had cooked off the chicken on top on to the skin so that when I took the chicken out later the skin would be nice, crispy and delicious (it was). What made my dinner making job even easier was that I had two sweet potatoes which I washed, stuck a knife into a few time and then put on the same pan as the chicken so that it baked with the chicken all at the same time on the same pan. When i spooned the chicken grease onto the chicken i just turned my potatoes over (the chicken juices on the pan just improve the sweet potatoes' flavor-make sure the sweet potatoes are coated though since dry skin will turn papery and taste bitter when the potatoes come out of the oven). When I took everything out of the oven I cut the sweet potatoes in half, filled then with brown sugar (don't bother with honey-the sweet potatoes will soak it up just like the brown sugar but you wont get the same big flavor), a tablespoon of butter (move it around until its melted), cinnamon and vanilla and then close the sweet potato back up so that it sponges up all that sweet goodness. This might have been one of my less adventurous meals but man was it easy and tasty. Voila! Dinner!

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