Will It Be Sous Vide? Chicken Legs With Dropped Bones
Hello food loving friends and welcome back to the very tender part of Will It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where I do whatever you want with my immersion circulator (most of the time).
I’m going to agree with all of you, I really kicked my ass this week and it caused me to deviate from the script. Although I arrived early on Sunday night with the strong intention of getting up before 8 a.m. – which is very early and very responsible for a writer who works from home – around 11:30 p.m., I was struck by either food poisoning, a stomach virus, or the pure wrath of the devil himself. I’ll spare you the details, but I was useless on Monday (and most of Tuesday), so I was completely absent from our topic selection session earlier this week.
When my temperature rose and I was able to open my laptop, I checked your suggestions and noticed a fair amount of fascination with entrails, especially chicken hearts. I was in awe of it, but it never happened. The nearest grocery store didn’t have them, and to be honest, I was still exhausted and didn’t feel like walking to another store in the rain.
The good news is that I have ordered several and we will be reviewing them next week. The best news is that this week I became a scammer and decided to try chicken legs. Considering the fact that these guys are rich in collagen – and can turn out to be quite chewy if you’re not careful – they seemed like great contenders for our little experiment.
These specific legs were pre-cleaned (but here’s how to clean them if yours isn’t), so all I had to do was thaw them and cut off my toes.
Chicken legs are usually marinated – at least overnight – so as soon as the chicken claws were free of the tips of the hooves, I tossed them into the marinade, which consisted of what I had in my fridge and pantry:
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 3/4 cup rice wine vinegar (I will reduce this amount to 1/2 cup in the future, and I suggest you do the same).
- 1/2 cup fish sauce
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 1/2 inches fresh ginger, minced
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
I put everyone in a bag and leave them for 24 hours at 180 ℉ so that the collagen completely melts and the meat becomes nice and elastic (not chewy).
Then I did a lot of other things, because 24 hours is a lot of time. After a day of waiting – and living my life – I pulled my legs out of there and let them drain on a cooling rack.
“Tenderness” doesn’t quite describe it. Not only were they not sticky at all, they were perfectly juicy and their own skin barely held them together. Speaking of that skin, it was a little flabby, but that’s okay because Crisco exists.
I heated the vegetable oil to 380 ℉ and sauté each leg until it turns brown and crispy.
Then I whipped up some sesame oil, honey, and a dipping sauce that came with the poached chicken and rice I ordered the night before at Nong’s (which is very good, by the way).
Now it’s time to ask this question: Will the chicken feet sous look?
Answer: mmmmm. Indeed, they do it, and they are good at it. These fallen bones were not only tender and not chewy at all, but cooking them in the marinade made them very flavorful. After a quick dip in the deep fryer, their skin was pleasantly crispy and made a great snack. They were like wings, only less fleshy and, more obviously, part of an animal. The only thing I didn’t like about them was the tiny bones.
In fact, this is not true. I kind of liked those tiny bones.