Baked Chicken

My sister K called me yesterday to give her a recommendation for this chicken she had…”it, like, looks like an ‘L’ shape, with more meat on one end than on the other end, and what do I do with it.  And it needs to be healthy!” 

“Hmm ok, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what it is called either, I think I’ve seen them as chicken quarters?  I dunno for sure.  But I do know what you can do with them!!”  This is a recipe that I made quite a bit last summer because it was SUPER easy and it was delicious!  The meat is always fall of the bone tender and, just like most of my recipes, you can change the seasonings to whatever you feel like having that day. 

Now get ready for a really complicated recipe, ok?  Take your chicken pieces, put them on a cookie sheet or in a casserole dish, season them with whatever you’d like, then put the pan in the oven for, like, 45 minutes.  Then take it out.  Done, son!  I told you!  Difficult, right?!  I’ll type it out again at the bottom for those who like to print the recipe off and stare at it 8,000 times to make sure you’re doing it right (and I definitely used to do this!).  Big thanks to K for taking pictures of her dinner and letting me share, since my camera is still not working. 

I usually have some of these in my freezer at all times…they frequently go on sale at my local grocery store and I can get two big pieces for less than $2, which is a good meal for us, so I stock up.  As far as seasoning goes, I like to use Creole, pepper, garlic salt and some Lawry’s.  K even juiced a couple of lemons over them, which is always good, too, but I don’t normally have lemons, so it would be bottled lemon juice for me, lol.

The cooking time can vary anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour, depending on how big and how many pieces of chicken you have.  I use a thermometer on my meat because I have anal freaks for sisters (S!) that are paranoid things are cooked long enough :-).  165 F is what my thermometer says the chicken should be, but if you don’t have a handy dandy thermometer, you can always cut into the meat to make sure it’s done, but just know you will lose some of your juice from the chicken and it won’t be as tender as it could have been, but it will still be delicious. Just make sure when you stick your thermometer in that you aren’t against a bone, since that will not be the right temperature for the meat, it usually reads hotter than the meat. The skin will be golden brown and kinda crispy and oh so good! 

For sides with this meal, I usually go with roasted potatoes and roasted broccoli, which I will share in a later post.  K paired it with steamed broccoli and brown rice and said it was

Baked Chicken

2 chicken leg quarters

Seasonings (Lawry’s, Creole, Garlic salt, salt, pepper, etc)

Lemon juice, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place chicken quarters on a cookie sheet or in a casserole dish, just make sure it has a lip on it so that the juice won’t run out and into your oven (that’d be a mess!).  Season however you’d like.  Place in oven and bake until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part (but make sure you don’t get on a bone!) reads 165 degrees.  Let sit for about 5 minutes and then serve. YUM.

 

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