This is one of our favourite meals. It is quick and very cheap. Chicken legs are a much underrated protein and hence very economical: a corn-fed free-range pair can be bought for a couple of quid. And, unlike your Sunday roast, this version goes from chopping board to table in just 40 minutes.
Quick roast chicken
Serves two
Ingredients
2 chicken legs, with skin on
Handful of fresh, chopped tarragon
1 lemon
2 tbsp butter (at room temperature)
Clove of garlic, crushed (plus extra whole cloves, if you love the stuff)
Salt and pepper
Method
- Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/gas5
- Make a small ‘nick’ in the skin at the fleshy part of the leg. Carefully work your finger between the skin and the flesh, creating a pocket.
- Wash your hands.
- Mix the chopped tarragon, garlic and butter together thoroughly.
- Divide the butter mixture into two. Gradually work this into the pockets you have created under the chicken skin, using your fingers. Pushing from the top of the skin will force the butter to the further parts of the leg. Smear some of the mixture on top of the skin too.
- Wash your hands. Season the chicken legs.
- Slice the lemon; you’ll need two discs around half an inch thick. Place the lemon slices in a roasting tin and balance a leg atop each one. If you are using extra garlic cloves, chuck them around the sides.
- Place the tin in the oven and cook for 40 minutes or so. When the chicken is cooked thoroughly, the juices will run clear when the joint is pieced at its flashiest part.
- Serve with your choice of starch and green veg. Tenderstem broccoli is a good shout here, as is a palette-cleansing green salad.
Siobhan Blunden-Currie is a head of department in a secondary school. She will be providing recipes every Friday for Tes
