Chicken thighs 101 - How to sear, stew, roast and de-bone

My life got better when I started buying chicken thighs instead of breasts .

Most of the time , in my opinion , the thigh is a far tastier quick weeknight protein and it's far easier to cook successfully .

We're gonna talk about shopping , butchering different cooking methods .

But first temperature thighs do not cook the same as breasts .

The breast is mostly fast twitch , muscle fiber for sudden explosive effort .

This has a way more slow twitch fiber for sustained , low level effort .

Like standing around that chicken is standing on its legs and thighs and its breast isn't doing anything because chickens don't really fly .

This thigh muscle has to work a little all day long .

So it's a different kind of muscle fiber .

It's better vascularized , meaning it's full of blood vessels , big and small .

It's got more fat in and around it and it has more connective tissue to keep it all together .

It's a different substance .

So it cooks differently .

But for this demonstration , I'm going to cook it the way you would cook breast real hot real fast .

And until a thermometer shows the minimum safe internal temperature for poultry , which officially is 160 five F 74 C , I usually cook breast a little less than that .

But there , for the sake of argument , 1 65 F 74 C , pull it out .

That was in for 10 minutes .

Let it rest a few minutes more and then slice .

If we had cooked breast to this temperature , it would either be dry or on the verge of dry .

This thigh is not dry , not in the least .

and it tastes ok , but it's a little tough and it's really slimy .

The toughness is connective tissue that hasn't had much of a chance to dissolve and the sliminess is fat that hasn't had much time to render or melt thighs .

Cooked to breast temperatures are kind of gross .

I mh o they're slimy .

Let's do this again .

First thing I'll do is lower my temperature just a little bit .

This is just south of medium on my stove .

You cook it a little slower .

You give that fat more time to melt , fat melts at a lower temperature than the heat at which meat cooks .

And whether the skin is on or off , I think you don't want to try to move or flip chicken until it releases very easily like that .

And you may think that skin isn't dark enough yet .

Maybe it's not , we can give it some more heat once the bottom side is ready to release .

But I think skin starts to taste burned at lighter colors than meat does so go easy on the skin .

The bottom side is about ready to release .

Chicken is just so much more delicate than beef .

So you really have to let the outside solidify before you can move it around .

Otherwise it'll stick to the pan and shred apart when you try to move it .

We're seared on all sides now .

So I can flip this kind of constantly , which I think is the best way it cooks a little faster when you flip frequently and you can keep an eye on everything .

Nothing is gonna burn without you knowing it , juice is starting to pool on the surface , which is one of the clear signals that the inside of meat is getting cooked .

When I poke it , it doesn't feel squishy inside anymore .

It feels bouncy , all good signs .

Now let's take its temperature and I'm going to take it way past 1 65 .

It's 1 75 which I consider the minimum for chicken dark meat .

But I really like to take it all the way to 1 85 F or 85 C .

Sometimes I let it go even than that .

That was in the pan for 13 minutes .

Is it gonna be dry ?

I don't know .

Does that look dry to you ?

Chicken breast cooked ?

This hot would be the texture of chalk .

This is actually more succulent than the thigh .

We cooked 20 degrees cooler and it's more tender .

This is because more of the collagen in the connective tissue has dissolved into sticky , delicious gelatin and more of that fat has melted .

So it's more moist and less slimy .

That is so good .

And to make it dinner , you could just make a little pan sauce or soak up any burned oil in the pan and deglaze with whatever liquid I see in the fridge , which today is cranberry juice .

Sure , dissolve the solids at the bottom of the pan , reduce the liquid until syrupy , then turn the heat off .

And when it's barely bubbling anymore , drop in a little bit of butter just barely melt that in .

Maybe throw in some parsley leaves and their pan sauce .

I usually like to use alcoholic beverages for pan sauce because a lot of sugar has been metabolized by the yeast .

When you reduce down juice , it tends to be super sweet .

Yeah , that is too sweet .

But you could use juice plus water or water plus a little sweet vinegar , all kinds of things .

Anyway , that is a tasty dinner in part because it's my favorite way of butchering chicken thigh .

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Ok .

So here's the three basic ways that you can buy standalone chicken thighs .

This one is skin on bone in there .

That is the chicken's femur in there , the thigh bone , that's the whole intact thigh .

Here's boneless bone taken out the skin still on .

That's what we've been cooking so far .

And here is boneless , skinless .

That's obviously gonna be the most expensive that butchering is done by hand .

Even in big factories , let's cook them side by side .

A little oil , pepper and salt smoosh , everything around intact .

Boneless , boneless skinless in the oven at like 3 75 F 1 90 C , any temperature in that neighborhood will be fine .

Half an hour later , they'll look like this .

Internal temperature is whoa , real hot , but that's fine .

Thighs are bulletproof .

You can weigh overcook them and they'll still be good .

In fact , I'm going to turn my broiler slash grill on to brown .

The tops of these a little bit more , much nicer thighs are great for sheet pan dinners .

I'm going to take out the de boned ones and let the bone in thigh cook a little bit longer just to put it on equal footing .

It's bigger , it's thicker .

It needs a little more time .

That was like 45 minutes total , much slower than the pan , but way easier that boneless skinless thigh .

I probably cooked to like 2 10 F 99 C internal temperature and it's still pretty soft and juicy and tasty thighs are bulletproof , boneless and skin on way tastier .

In my opinion , listen to that crisp skin , unlike breasts , you can cook thighs to the point where most of the subcutaneous fat has rendered out and the skin is just totally crisp .

Awesome .

The bone in thigh .

It's easy to eat when you go to this part here .

And that is indeed very tasty .

Except for that spot of burnt skin on the top .

Bits of burned meat can taste kind of good burned skin is always gross .

Once you start cutting in here , you run into that bone and it just gets in the way .

It gets to be hard to eat around and there's some grossness , some big hunks of cartilage , some slimy blood vessels and tendons , certainly easier to eat if you just pick it up .

But the area right around the bone is honestly a little bit undercooked and under flavored thing is it's easy to buy thighs totally intact .

It's easy to buy them boneless and skinless , but it can be hard to find them skin on bone out .

So let's talk about boning them out ourselves .

I was reading this article in poultry science as one does about a new method of deboning chicken dislocation of articular cartilage followed by stripping periosteum .

The articular cartilage is the stuff on either ends of the femur where the hip and knee joints were .

According to this article , you cut through the cartilage , pull it off the bone and then just pull the meat down .

Strip the periosteum , which is the tissue connecting the meat to the sides of the bones .

I could not make that work .

Let me know if you can .

Here's my method which is crude but real easy .

If you have one , use a boning knife , which is a very thin blade , you can get them for cheap because they're stamped , not forged , stamping out a steel sheet is cheaper than forging it like you do for a chest knife .

One cut down the middle , right on top of the bone , then one cut down along the side of the bone , but not all the way through to the board just down as deep as the bone goes .

Same cut on the other side .

And I'm not worrying about the ends of the bone near the joints , just the middle section of the bone .

Now , I can very carefully slide my knife up underneath the middle of the bone like that in under and out the other side , saw a little bit to make a bigger hole big enough that you can stick your finger through and peek it out the other side .

Hello , now , get that knife in there again , facing away from your finger and saw out , saw out until you can push all the way through and there that's one joint free and the other is easier .

I just kind of lever the bone away and cut around that joint until it's free done .

There's some waste .

Sure .

But like I said , this is easy .

It is neither fast nor best , but that's a perfect thing to freeze for stock or some such .

Now around where the joints were , there's gonna be bits of cartilage .

Those are gross , feel around for them and slice them off .

There will also be a few little bits of blubbery fat that won't render down all the way when you cook them , they will be slimy and gross .

They should be right around the edge of the skin , just trim them off .

There's that flap of skin hanging off the side .

Not all butchers give that to you , but this one did .

I trim it off mostly because right under where it meets the meat , there's gonna be another blubbery bit of fat hanging out just under the skin that tends to be slimy .

Even after it's cooked , you could cut it or even scrape it off .

Beautiful .

That meat is now a super even thickness .

So it's gonna cook evenly , it's thin .

So it's gonna cook quickly and you can flavor more of it and that skin is going to be crispy and delicious .

But so you don't want the skin , well , lift it up and you might need to reach in with your knife and open up that membrane underneath .

Then you can just pull it off until you can't anymore .

At that point , I just start cutting and off .

It comes easy .

I prefer skinless , boneless for most wet cooking methods like stews .

These make an insanely quick and tasty stew .

I'll just cut a couple of thighs into chunks .

Remembering that the chunks are gonna shrink in half as they cook into the oil pan season and keep them moving to keep them from sticking to the pan or each other just stir stir stir until they're basically cooked brown on the outside and just about cooked through on the inside .

Maybe in with some sliced shallots , fry those a little bit and then time to deglaze with my old white wine so good for chicken stew .

And I reckon baby carrots or big chunks of adult carrots will cook in about the same time that it takes for that meat to go soft cover and reduce to a simmer .

Check on it every now and then just to make sure that nothing is sticking and the liquid isn't all evaporating .

If it is , I'd supplement with water and not more wine , too much reduced wine would be really strong .

Here we are like half an hour later .

Everything is tender .

Let's thicken and enrich that with a little cream .

Super Frenchy .

This stew is simmer the cream until thick taste for seasoning can add anything that it needs like salt drop in some fresh thyme or other herb .

And you could have that over egg noodles or rice or something or you could just put it in a bowl maybe mop up the sauce with some crusty bread .

Thigh meat is so much more succulent in stews than breast meat is .

But let's finish this off with the easiest option .

You could totally just throw the whole intact thigh into a pot .

Brown , both sides just to create some flavor in there .

Throw in whatever vaguely Latin American seasonings you have fry them for a sec .

Then just about cover everything with water .

Reduce the heat to a simmer , cover the pot .

Wait maybe an hour until the meat feels like you could easily pull it off the bone .

Pull those out and let them cool until you can handle them .

Meanwhile , you could drop some veggies in here and make a soup or you could do what I usually do , which is boil this down to a glaze .

You don't need to stir it at all until it gets really thick .

That's when it could stick and burn because we left the skin on those thighs .

We dissolved a lot of gelatin out of it .

That sauce is gonna be luscious as it is .

But you could augment it with a little vinegar or other acid or maybe a little honey or other sweetener .

And that is a super tasty coating for this chicken that will now pull off and shred when the skin is cooked wet .

I think it's and gross and I don't actually want to eat it .

Take it off as you pull meat off the bone .

Note the articular cartilage at the ends of the bone where the joints were .

Nobody wants to bite into that and you can easily pull it off now that everything is cooked soft .

Some people debone and shred chicken with forks .

I think that's crazy .

If you use your fingers , you can feel for the bits of cartilage or un rendered fat or anything else that you don't want to eat .

And if you're gonna be tossing this in a sauce , don't shred it down all the way because it's gonna shred some more as you stir it in the sauce .

Hey there .

I don't know if that's a tendon or a blood vessel , but I felt that it was slimy so I can take it out in that sauce .

It goes for my taste .

I wish I had reduced that glaze a little thicker , but that's still gonna make for a darn tasty taco with some green stuff on top and a squeeze of lime to boot .

I am a thigh man all day long .