Chicken legs are great for roasting
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 6€ pp)
- salt
- 4 chicken legs
- EV olive oil
- 4 small fennels
- 4 medium yellow peppers
- 2 garlic heads cut in halves horizontally
- 8 juniper berries
- lemon zest
- fennel leaves
In recent years I rarely roast a whole chicken as neither me nor my wife like the lean and tasteless breast.
So, when I buy a chicken (always organic), I remove its breast and I keep it for a fast pan cooking. I use the carcass for stocks and the wings for a soup and I roast only the legs. I advise you to do the same, except if in your family there is a weirdo who likes roasted chicken breast. Personally I know nobody who does it.
The day before we salt the legs UNDER THEIR SKIN (in order to keep it crispy during roasting) and we put them in the fridge for about 24 hours. The next day we rinse the salt and we dry the pieces internally.
The pre-salting of the chicken legs makes them juicy and tender meanwhile the “under the skin” application of the salt does not affect negatively the skin’s crispiness.
We put in a baking pan the legs with the skin on top along with the yellow peppers cut in pieces and the fennels peeled and cut into thin slices.
We add abundant olive oil, the fresh fennel leaves, salt and the crushed juniper berries, we mix well, we cover with aluminium foil and we put in a preheated oven for about 1 1/2 hour at 140 – 150 degrees. 25 minutes before time ending we add the garlic halves and we cover again.
When the meat is ready we remove the vegetables and the garlic, we check the salt, adding some if required, we raise the oven temperature to 220 Celsius degrees and we roast the chicken legs (uncovered.) to “brown” for about 10 minutes.
We add some lemon zest and we serve.
If you can´t find yellow peppers use red but NOT green, because they loose their vivid colour during the prolonged exposure to heat.
