Chicken Thighs - Cooking Tip

Stay Classy Meats Chicken Thighs

Pan-Seared Chicken Thighs in Sweet / Tangy Sauce

Ingredients:

• 4 - 6 ounce Stay Classy Meats Chicken Thighs
• Rub of choice (coarse rub with sugar)
• 1/3 cup Sweet / Tangy Sauce (make it or buy it)
• ½ cup beef stock
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 Sprigs of Thyme
• Finely chopped Chives

Rub of choice
Find a rub you like for chicken and add in 2 teaspoons of sugar – this is to help sear the skinless breast.  Coarse rubs are our favorite.

Chicken Thighs

1. Remove chicken from the fridge 30 minutes before cooking. Pat dry the thighs to remove any moisture. Season both sides generously with the rub making sure that you can visibly see sugar on both sides of the chicken.  If there is skin on, lift of the skin and coat under the skin with a generous coat of coarse rub.
2. Using a cast iron pan, turn on the stove top to a medium high temp. Add olive oil (or whatever oil you use), allow the skillet to get to very hot. Place the thighs face down and sear for 5 minutes (move them around the pan).  Please note, DO NOT OVERCROWD THE PAN – This creates a different cooking method called boiling – and less tasty.  If you have skin on, lower the heat to a medium low after 3 minutes (if not keep it at medium high) – this is to prevent the skin from burning.  Use your spoon to baste the top of the thighs with the hot oil.  When ready, flip the thighs and let sear for another 5 minutes.
3. Just before removing, add in a tablespoon of butter and 1 sprig per thigh. Tilt the pan down and have the butter melt into the oil.  With a sprig of thyme on each thigh, take your spoon and baste each thigh with the oil/butter mix, on top of the thyme.  Do this 5-6 times each thigh.
4. Remove the thighs from the pan and place on a cooling/baking rack
5. In a sauce pan on medium high heat, add the Sweet/Tangy sauce and ¼ cup beef stock. Let heat up a bit.  After a minute, add 1 tablespoon butter.  Cook for another minute and add in another ¼ cup of beef stock.  Let cook down (reduce).  When you see the sides start to cook off, the sauce is ready.  2-3 minutes.
6. Plate the thighs on separate plates and with spoon, pour the sauce over the thighs. Sprinkle finely chopped chives on top.
7. A safe internal temperature to eat chicken is 165F. Please use a meat thermometer to determine the internal temperature.

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Transcription:
Dudes, I got something for you - our chicken thighs are hormone-free, cage-free, antibiotic-free. They are just being chickens, which means you're just being a dude in a gym, getting swoll. That's how we do things. Stay Classy. This is that man meat. Hey, you don't have a beard? You should grow one. Calm down, guy.

So seasoning, I'm going to be real honest with you guys. You guys need to be really proactive and google it. It's really cool. It's like the search engine thing. And you like search seasoning spice for chicken thighs. I don't have any special blend. There's nothing crazy about mine. Be creative with yourself. Someone's going to love you for it.

So I like to use coarse seasonings. One thing you want to remember is that you have the inside flap [of the chicken skin] as well. I remove the skin because I think there needs to be a separation between the actual chicken thigh and the chicken skin. If you guys want, you just man up. Maybe you just got back from the gym and you just like hulk it or going to take the skin, remove it all the way back at a little bit more of your own seasoning rub (emphasis on your own), little bit of salt, tuck it back over and this one is ready to go. And now you have two variations.

Sometimes people don't want to do the actual thigh bone. In there is the bone. If you slide your index finger along that bone, you can actually start to remove it without adding a lot of pressure. So you'll find something here around the knuckle, a little bit of cartilage. Just kind of start to trim that down and then that will release and you can start to peel away the skin from the bone. Boom, bones gone.

So now we've got our chicken thighs marinated. I'm going to show you guys how to do skin side down first and then after that, you guys can figure out your own way to do it. I'm just showing you a way not the way. Remember dudes, you always want to hear that crackle. You never want to overcrowd the pan because if you overcrowd the pan, we're just boiling stuff. You don't want to boil this meat. We’re looking for crispy skin and a nice crunch to it. This is that man meat. Know what I'm saying?

You start a pan on like medium high heat and now we're actually going to turn the heat  just a little bit lower and would do like a medium low because we don't want to actually burn our chicken skins. Them apartment burns, they will get ya. Just kidding, in fantasy land everything works perfect here.

So see, if you guys want to look, we started to draw some moisture from the chicken skin and it's actually doubled in size. So there's more liquid in there than we started with. And so that skin is actually starting to pick up a little bit. That's, oh - calm down guy.

What’s actually kind of cool, you can actually do, if you guys want, actually stick your hand [with a spook] in the pan and get the oil and just kind of like give the bottom side of your chicken thigh a little head start in the cooking process [chef takes spoon, fills it with the oil and coats the top of the chicken]. It’s come that time for us to flip it. Let's give it a turn. Oh yeah. So now you can see that sugar, really caramelized chicken thigh on the top. Got that skin. Nice and golden brown, delicious.

We're not poisoning our animals. We're taking care of them. The cycle of life is actually in a full circle and they're being treated and cared for. I don't think that most people understand or disillusioned from that process. That's a big word. I'll be honest with you, I don’t normally use that word. But if you google it and you troll me, I'm pretty sure I'll be informed, so appreciate you.

So guys, we've done about five minutes on the top of our chicken skin in about five minutes on the bottom half of our thigh. And we're looking pretty good here. So I'm going to take this out the pan and set it on our resting rack. And what this is going to do is to allow our chicken to cool down and actually reabsorb some of that moisture that we put in there.

So this is going to be our sweet tangy sauce. It's going to pair real nice with this chicken thigh. We're going to cut in some richness and we’re going to add a nice little tang to it. Add some of that stock. We’ll show you just how to do something crazy right now. One tablespoon of butter, gone into the pan hot. One sprig of thyme. I'm going to let this fall all the way down to our hot oil and we're just going to coat it. Basically basting this chicken thigh. You don't know what you're doing yet, but you will and you're going to make something awesome. Now, I am going to add one tablespoon of butter to my sauce. I want to add just a little bit more beef stock.

So now this is finished as you see it. So the edges are starting to cook off and now I’m going to go ahead and pour it over.

There it is, boys, chicken thighs, your weeks prepared meals ain’t never been so good.