Cooking 101 ~ Cheap chicken :-) ~ Part 1

Remember that cheap chicken that I got on sale at Target before Thanksgiving? Well, I promised I would show you what I did with it :-) So here we go...

First...I wanted to take the chicken legs and make them very flavorful. In my family there are some who prefer the white meat only...for those folks I needed to make the dark meat really tasty and I knew I would be using it only IN a recipe, not by itself. So here is what I did with one of the $1.00 pack of legs (10 legs) ~

I started by mixing up a Jamaican style spice rub:

2 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp. poultry seasoning
2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 tsp. Jamaican jerk seasoning (McCormick's)
2 tsp. garlic salt w/ parsley (Lawry's)
1 tsp. seasoned pepper (Lawry's)
2 tsp. Mixed Up salt (Jane's Krazy)
2 tsp. dried garlic & onion (McCormick's)
1 tsp. Italian seasoning (herbs)
2 tsp. light brown sugar
2 tsp. roasted garlic pieces (The Garlic Co., I buy this at Walmart in the spice section)
1 tsp. ground cumin

Mix all the spices together in a shallow bowl and then pour a little olive oil (about 4 tbsp.) in another shallow bowl...I quickly coated the legs in the oil and then rolled them around in the spice mixture...Add the legs to the crockpot and then add enough chicken stock to cover them about 3/4 of the way, be sure to add the liquid to the side of the crock so that you don't wash off all the seasonings. They should look like this...
I cooked these on low for 10 hours (overnight), but you could also do high for about 4-5 hours. Once they are cooked, they will be falling off the bone...literally ;-) So at this point I remove them from the crock and let them cool slightly on a plate, just cool enough to touch.
Out comes the last leg...your crock should look like this: And your house should be smelling fab-u-lous!!! Yummo

Okay...next step is to remove the meat from the bones...I remove the skin and any fat too. your legs should be looking like this...Alrighty...if you made it through the deboning, then your chicken should look like this:
At this point, you would either place in the fridge or seal up for the freezer...mine went in the fridge.

This mixture is mildly spicy...so it goes great in mexican dishes, jamaican dishes, anything that requires a little kick :-)

I actually took one box of jambalaya mix (Zatarain's) and one bag of yellow rice, mixed them together and cooked in a pot on the stove. I added the chicken to the pot at the start of cooking and that way the chicken was heated through by the time the rice had cooked. We added some veggies and some spicy black beans and voila...dinner was served!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Cheap Chicken recipe series....