Thighs With Bone and Skin on Thighs – Easiest Chicken for Beginners
For reasons I cannot understand (the 80s and 90s diet), many people my age started out on the journey of making chicken with boneless and skinless breasts. In their defense, the breasts do look simple, almost sterile – a piece of clean meat without bones and fat to “deal” with. But bones and fat make meat taste good, and removing them greatly increases the chances of a novice chef making mistakes.
You might think that whole fried chicken is a good starting point for poultry, and that is definitely a big improvement. After all, they are on all the X Things Every Adult Should Be Able to Cook list, but they’re also not exactly the right chicken shape to start with. The whole poultry is a thermodynamic task: two types of meat must be cooked with two different end points. Sure, there are many ways to accomplish this, but there is nothing more discouraging than slicing up a beautiful fried chicken just to show off dark meat and white dry meats, and your first cooking projects should be more hopeful and reassuring than that.
This is where the thigh bones and skin on the thighs come in handy: this is the perfect chicken cooking project for beginners.
The aforementioned 80s and 90s diet strongly influenced meat, as well as what we perceive as “good” and “good for you.” Avoid fat, skinned, glorified thinness, lost taste. But bones, skin and fat are your friends. They provide fragrance, but they also act as built-in cushions that provide moisture and collagen to coat the mouth, making cuts with bones, oil and skin much more gentle and difficult to dry.
Chicken thighs are best cooked at an internal temperature of 165 ℉ -170 ℉, as opposed to breasts, which begin to dry out — and dry quickly — at temperatures above 155. The thigh meat is covered with a thick layer of skin, which is also beautifully brown. (Another thigh benefit: You only need to reheat one part of the chicken.)
Cooking a carcass is less wasteful and often cheaper, but based on cooking a single portion of poultry, it allows you to get more comfortable with cooking meat, not to mention the touching skin and bones that many beginners have problems with initially before tackling the larger project of a whole poultry. (Plus, if you screw it up, it’s just a few thighs, not a whole animal, which is somehow sadder.)
As far as recipes go, there are plenty of them on the internet, but those dry brine buttermilk thighs are quite forgiving. They are salted overnight, then sautéed in one skillet at the same temperature without turning or milling, and are juicy and full of flavor. After you’ve nailed a few thighs, you can move on to poaching or roasting whole (hopefully buttermilk or labneh brine ) birds. Set yourself up for chicken wins, that’s what I’m saying – life itself is difficult enough.