Slow Roasted Heritage Chicken Legs

Digging around in my deep freeze I found some of the precious few USDA packages of chicken legs from our days as small scale sustainable farmers.  But, they are Heritage breed.  This quite often means tough and stringy.  The best way to combat this is to cook them at a low heat for a long time.

In the name of food safety I found this snippet about slow cooking.  No need to worry about cooking at temperatures 170 and above.  You'll want your done chicken to register at 165.

So, I defrosted the legs in some water, drained, seasoned with salt, pepper, and rosemary, and started them in a cold oven, in a roasting pan with lid, and set the oven for 200 degrees.  I read that at this heat expect chicken to take 5-7 hours.  I chose 200 degrees because this is the standard "low" setting on a crock pot.  I chose the oven because heritage leg quarters won't fit in my crock pot, plus I wanted more of a roasted technique.

The house smelled great from the second hour on.  When I took the legs out of the oven 7 hours later, the internal temp was at least 175, so plenty safe.  And from what I could tell poking the meat thermometer in, the meat was tender and not dried out.  Since I roasted with the lid on, there were actually some drippings in the pan.  The skin surprisingly was not floppy and pale, but somewhat crisp and browned.  This matters not to me because I am not a skin eater.  I should have taken a picture.

The thigh meat was tender, juicy, and delicious.  The leg meat was still a bit chewy but not inedible, or as I call it-meat chewing gum.  That was fine, because I planned to use some of the meat in chicken soup.  I'd call this technique a success, and I plan to use it with other tough cuts in our freezer.