Last week, we had a friend stay with us for a few days while she found an apartment in the area. Naturally, I made some nice dinners for us (though we did have one of our best restaurant experiences in a long time at a Greek restaurant in a small strip mall right near the Fairfax-Loudoun border. I always say our suburbs have better food than D.C.)

Anyway, here are two of the dinners I made:

Yes, I’m showing off a little bit, but I want to talk about chicken thighs.

Some say chicken thighs are too strong-tasting; others say Americans dislike them because they’re less “white” than chicken breasts, or because the thigh is viewed as an “immigrant” or “poor” food, or something. I guess that’s unfortunate if it’s true, but the fact is, chicken thighs are one of the cheapest cuts of meat you can buy. I’ve gotten them on manager’s special, but still plenty fresh, for eighty-eight cents a pound. By weight, that’s cheaper than almost anything in a grocery store.

I find that chicken thigh meat can have a slightly gamey/bloody/“chickeney” taste, but some of that has to do with cooking—they don’t taste great when you try to bake them but they sort of steam instead—and I also find that “dry brining” dramatically improves the meat.

Sprinkle the thighs thoroughly but not too heavily with something like two parts salt and one part sugar (skip the sugar if you like, but I like the extra seasoning it adds) and let them sit a few hours or (better) overnight in the fridge, uncovered or loosely covered. The meat loses a little bit of liquid, but it doesn’t dry out—it takes on a slightly lighter, rosier color and ends up juicy and slightly springy. One night my wife and I made Japanese-style deep-fried chicken with chicken thigh pieces that had been brined this way. It tasted like the best restaurant fried chicken, without a hint of that chicken-gaminess.

To do this really well and for the seasoning to penetrate all of the meat, I typically debone chicken thighs whenever I make them (sometimes instead of dry-brining I’ll marinate them, which does much the same thing, so don’t do both; dry-brining is more for if I’m grilling them with just a brush of barbecue sauce.)

Deboning them is pretty easy—I don’t even need a knife except to separate the bone from the cartilage at one end. It’s easy enough to pry the bone out otherwise. This will usually leave behind a stringy vein adjacent to the bone, which I also pull out, and which also doesn’t need any knife work.

I used to just get rid of the bones. And I also used a ton of Chinese granulated chicken bouillon, which is basically just salt, sugar, MSG, and preservatives with a little bit of chicken flavor and maybe a tiny bit of powdered chicken meat. It tastes good enough, but it’s very heavy on the salt and light on the depth of flavor a real chicken broth can have.

So lately, I’ve started saving the bones, and when I have a set of four or six, making three or four cups of light, barely salted chicken broth. This chicken broth then nearly replaces chicken powder in lots of dishes. There’s homemade chicken-thigh-bone broth in both of those dinners I showed above. A fraction of the amount of chicken bouillon I used to use is now enough, just to enhance the real broth. And the flavor is richer. (The broth in the soup is made of the light homemade broth, and the things on the big plate that look like noodles—actually, matchstick-cut potatoes—have a splash of chicken broth in them. So does the brown sauce in the mushroom and bok choy dish.)

When I used to grill or broil chicken thighs, I’d always have trouble with the skin. If the skin got crispy, the meat would dry out. If the meat was cooked perfectly, the skin would be rubbery. And the meat underneath would get no seasoning in any case. So the last trick I’ve started applying to chicken thighs is almost always removing the skin. I like to cut it in strips, lightly coat it in cornstarch, and fry it in an inch or so of oil until crispy (they’re done when they stop splattering and audibly sizzling). Like fried pork rinds, but cleaner tasting. (They’re in the bowl to the left of the potatoes.)

This allows me to then brine, marinate, or otherwise season the boneless, skinless, deveined thighs on both sides, and to cook them very quickly to a perfect doneness (something like 15-20 minutes in a very hot oven, or 10-15 minutes on the grill outside). Then on the side, I’ll serve the crispy skin, and then I have homemade broth to come.

One other little wonderful extra: the oil from frying the chicken skin will render out the actual fat in the skin, leaving you with a mix of chicken fat and vegetable oil. I strain this through a fine tea strainer and save it, and either fry one or two more times with it, or use it in place of vegetable oil to add a little extra flavor.

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs are available in the store, of course, but they’re more expensive. Now that I know how to fully utilize the natural, humble, chicken thigh, I feel like I’m getting more for less.

This may all sound like a lot of work. It is, I guess. But it’s also so simple and resourceful. It multiplies what this already very affordable cut of meat can do in the kitchen. And once you learn these tricks, they become second-nature. Cooking is one of those things where your skill and comfort grow imperceptibly, until you can make real, serious food in the same time it used to take to make something very basic or just not that great.

I sometimes think about this question of foodies versus families. There’s something of a trope or narrative that single, childless people care too much about food, while busy families just need to eat. I think that’s a very American idea. It implies that culinary quality is at odds with speed and simplicity.

Sometimes I spend a couple of hours making dinner. I probably won’t do that so much when we have kids. I do it while I can, and I actually enjoy it—cooking isn’t a chore to me. But with a little bit of planning and prep work and organization, you can absolutely make very healthy, tasty meals on a budget and under a time constraint.

Say I’m very busy, but I have a spare half hour. I could “process” (that’s what I call it) a whole tray of chicken thighs, and freeze the different parts. Then, on a tight weeknight, pull out a boneless skinless chicken thigh set, pick a seasoning/style, and there’s dinner. Pasta dishes allow much the same ease. Part of it is modular thinking: “chicken dishes” and “pasta dishes” as proteins, starches, seasonings, sides that can be swapped in and out. A lot of it just familiarity and muscle memory.

It’s an art and a joy, really, to transform raw ingredients into food, to present—to offer, in something almost foreshadowing sacrifice—one’s labor and its result, and everything it contains.

And you don’t need gold leaf or wagyu or caviar or whatever other assemblage of hoity-toity ingredients passes for culinary skill. You just need some chicken thighs.

Related Reading:

What’s Cooking?

Make It New Every Day

Kitchen Contentment

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