Roast Chicken with Garlic & Shallot Marinade

Having trouble coming up with a less generic name for this recipe; the original was simply Easy Roast Chicken...

Recipe

~8 pieces of chicken, one whole bird broken down or your choice, skin-on/bone-in

3 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp red wine vinegar (or my standby apple cider vinegar)

1 tbsp brown sugar

4 shallots, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

Mix everything into the marinade, and toss in the chicken.  Place chicken in a baking dish skin side up (spooning over extra sauce) and bake at 425 for 30 minutes.  Baste the chicken and flip, and cook another 10 minutes or more until done.

Notes

That sauce is pretty awesome.  I turned up the garlic (to the above amount) and probably the shallot too (what actually counts as one shallot?), and kept spooning sauce over and scooping it up with every bite.  Yeah, pretty awesome.

Glazed Chicken Breasts

Cooks Illustrated Science of Good Cooking again...

Recipe

1 1/2 c apple cider
1/3 c light corn syrup
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp vinegar
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 c flour
2 bone-in chicken breasts
1 shallot, minced
oil, salt & pepper

Whisk together the cider, corn syrup, honey, mustard, vinegar, red pepper, and a little salt and pepper.  Preheat the oven to 375 and heat a couple tbsps of oil in an oven-safe skillet.  Pat the chicken dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and coat the chicken in the flour.  Brown skin-side down for 8-14 minutes, flip and cook another 5 minutes.  Set the chicken aside and cook the shallots for a couple minutes, then add the glaze and simmer until thickened and reduced, about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and tilt the skillet, roll each piece of chicken to coat, and put skin-side down in the skillet.  Pop the skillet in the oven for 25-30 minutes, flipping the chicken halfway through.  When it's done, remove the chicken, heat the glaze for a few minutes to thicken again, and spoon over the chicken to serve.

Notes

There are a couple substitutions the cookbook recommends.  The recipe above is more or less the ones I chose - didn't have corn syrup so I just used extra honey.  It maybe kept the glaze from thickening a bit, but the end result did not suffer.  You should end up with plenty of glaze.  I sopped up the last dregs with a slice of bread.  Maybe all the concentrated sugar undermines the healthiness of the dish (and the steamed green beans), but I'm not complaining.

Crispy Roast Chicken with Lemon-Herb Sauce

Obviously I can't let Emma have the last word in crispy chicken...  This one comes courtesy of America's Test Kitchen, and while it's more labor intensive than some other recipes, it's hard to argue with the results.  The skin does crisp up deliciously, and it makes me want to cook with shallots more. To wit:

The Recipe

3 1/2 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken, mix of parts
1 - 1 1/4 c chicken broth

1 medium shallot, minced
1 tsp flour (optional?)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tbsp parsley, minced
1 1/2 tbsp chives, minced

butter, salt, pepper, olive oil

Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil medium-high, and add chicken skin-side down until golden-brown (5-8 minutes).  Flip chicken, lower heat to medium-low, add 3/4 c broth, cover and cook 10-15 minutes.  Remove chicken to a plate and liquid to cup.  Wipe skillet with paper towel, heat oil medium-high and add chicken again, skin-side down until "deep golden brown" (about 5 minutes).  Remove (back) to plate and cover; skim fat from reserved liquid and add broth to about 3/4 c.

Now, heat shallot over low heat, about a minute.  Add flour and cook about 30 seconds; add broth, heat to medium-high, simmer and scrape up chicken bits...  Reduce to about 1/2 c, stir in juices from resting chicken, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, parsley, chives, and butter.

The Results

Re-reading the recipe, I'm not sure I added all the herbs, but the shallot-lemon-broth sauce was still excellent!