For some reason, I’ve always been quite picky when it comes to meat, so much so that I have two golden rules about meat:

1. I have to be able to identify what animal it came from

2. I have to be able to identify what part of the animal it came from

…which meant that in my younger years, late night visits to the local kebab van (a popular eating destination after a night out drinking in Britain, usually around 2-3am) for me consisted of a bag of chips. It’s true; I would rather eat raw lobster body meat from a crustacean that is sitting on a plate right in front of me with his antennae flexing, than a kebab (I’ll save that story for another time).

My pickiness somewhat extends to chicken. I’ve been known to eat the odd leg or wing now and then, but I am definitely a breast/white meat person. For my British reader(s), the US distinguish different chicken cuts as white meat (aka: the breast) vs. dark meat (aka: leg, wings, thigh etc). My parents on the other hand disagree with me, of course. They always told me that the breast is dry and flavorless and that the legs and wings are much more tasty cuts. But this is coming from people who like to eat the bum and the feet. Hmm…

Anyway, today I ventured outside of my comfort zone and tried chicken legs on the grill. I’ve never cooked anything other than the breast before, so this was a first for me.

For the Honey Mustard Marinade:

6 large chicken legs

1/2 cup honey

4 tbsp dijon mustard

4 tbsp wholegrain mustard

4 tbsp white wine vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

Salt and Pepper

The marinade smelled absolutely divine, so much so that I had to stop myself from just gulping it down the hatchet. Instead, I was good and poured it over the chicken legs leaving it to marinade in the fridge for one hour.

After an hour I nervously fired up the grill to about 350, and continued to baste the legs, until they looked like this…

They looked more or less done after 35 minutes, so I took them off the grill and @TheSkivvy and I sat down for some serious munching. It smelled absolutely delicious and the marinade had caramelized beautifully. The honey mustard flavor was to die for, but what about the chicken?

Now I know the chicken was cooked (because my trusty Weber wand told me so, and because the meat was white and not pink), but there was something about the texture of the meat that was a bit odd. Was it because I’m more used to eating breast? Or maybe because when I do eat legs they have been cooked to hell, and as dry as the Sahara? To be honest, I’m not exactly sure, but they seemed a little undercooked for my liking. Plus I get REALLY paranoid when it comes to cooking chicken properly… food poisoning from chicken is the worst (even more so than Flatulence Beans).

So not wanting to poison us again, I battled the leg off @TheSkivvy’s plate and put them back on the grill for another 10 minutes… This time, much better.

So after my first chicken leg experience, the jury is still out on legs. When I was eating, all that I could think about was how great this honey mustard marinade would taste on a nice breast, or chicken kabob.

Lessons Learned:

Breast is best

This honey mustard marinade should be made into a drink

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This entry was posted on April 3, 2010 at 10:38 pm and is filed under chicken. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: chicken, drumsticks, honey-mustard

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