Bon Appétit (October 2015)
Bittens, sometimes you gotta listen to what the universe is trying to tell you.
And last week, the universe was telling us to make fried chicken skins.
When we made that Chicken-and-Squash Curry, the recipe called for "bone-in chicken thighs, skinned." We couldn't find bone-in skinless thighs at the market, so we skinned them ourselves.
By the time we had prepped the chicken, we had a lot of perfectly good skins just sitting there. (We had doubled the recipe for that curry, so we're talking a lot of chicken skins.)
On a whim, we decided not to throw the skins away just yet. Maybe we'd do something with them...? We sealed them in a plastic bag and tossed them in the fridge.
The very next day, we received the October issue of Bon Appétit. And wouldn't you know it? Right there on page 22, a whole feature on crispy chicken skins -- complete with a couple different recipes, a few ways to use the skins once they're cooked, and some restaurants around the country that are serving chicken skins on everything from salad to charcuterie.
It was a sign!
So we got to fryin'.
OK, not frying. It's actually easier than that -- you just bake the skins pressed between two cookie sheets for an hour.
How'd they turn out?
Well, we hated them! They were greasy and "meaty" in a bad way, like bad pork rinds or, well, chicharrónes, which we don't really care for. (Go figure.) Our skins also tasted a bit on the burnt side -- we should have checked them at 45 minutes or 50 minutes in. The full hour was too much.
We each took a bite and then we tossed the skins in the trash.
It was fun to try, and maybe we'd do it again sometime. (The Bon App feature also included a more complicated recipe for Chicken Skin with Peanuts, Chiles, and Lime, which we must admit sounds pretty delicious.)
But we also learned a valuable life lesson: Bittens, sometimes you gotta completely ignore what the universe is trying to tell you.
Crispy Salt-and-Pepper Chicken Skin
Bon Appétit (October 2015), recipe by Eli Dahlin, Damn the Weather, Seattle, WA
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(This photo: Bon Appétit/Danny Kim)
INGREDIENTS
1/2 pound chicken skin (from about 2 whole chickens or 3 thighs)
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
DIRECTIONS
