Roasted Chicken Legs With Cranberry Butter
The sweet, slightly tart butter in this recipe crisps up the chicken skin and moistens the meat at the same time. You start by making a compound butter: mashing cranberries, honey, and orange zest into room temperature butter. You can make the butter up to a week ahead of time. Shape it into a log on a piece of wax paper, roll it up, and twist the ends to store it. The butter will solidify, so you can cut off neat, round slices that are easy to tuck under the chicken skin. After you roast the chicken, the pan drippings make a tasty sauce; serve it with bread, rice or couscous, for sopping up all those delicious juices.
Ingredients
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
2 tablespoons honey
½ teaspoon orange zest
½ cup (4 oz.) salted butter, softened
4 chicken leg quarters
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
Nutrition
Fiber 1.09g
Calories 740.13
Sugar 9.71g
Fat 54.22g
Cholesterol 378.86mg
Sat Fat 23.14g
Iron 2.71mg
Sodium 827.63mg
Protein 4.38g
Calcium 98.33mg
Carbohydrate 23.67g
Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Combine cranberries, honey, and orange zest in a small saucepan over medium-high; bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, stirring often, until cranberries burst and are tender, about 8 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; coarsely mash, and stir together with butter.
Pat chicken dry, and place on an aluminum foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. Loosen skin; spread 2 tablespoons cranberry butter over and under skin of each chicken quarter. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Bake in preheated oven until skin is crisp and golden and a meat thermometer inserted into thickest portion registers 165°F, about 45 minutes.
Yields: 4 (serving size: 1 leg quarter)
