Stuffed Chicken Thighs

These are the stuffed chicken thighs I made last night. They were as good as they were easy. I don’t recommend starting them at 7:30 at night for a blog post the following day, but they don’t take long, and I had them in the oven in under an hour. To stuff a chicken thigh you will need to remove the bone, and so for the first time in the history of The Chef’s Last Diet, I present to you a how-to video: boning a chicken thigh I hope it’s helpful, and if it is, please let me know! (Also, please let me know if you think it sucks.)

For stuffing you can use almost anything, rice-y you have on hand. I used a packaged quinoa and grain mix, which made things even easier, and is included in my under one hour prep time.  You could use any leftover rice you have which would be even quicker! If you use leftover rice, you might want to add some flavorings like herbs and spices, and some aromatics, like chopped sautéed onion or scallions, and maybe some shredded carrot.
This post is more about a how to, than a recipe per se. You can buy boneless chicken thighs, but those often have no skin, and even if you manage to discard the cooked chicken skin (and if you do you I admire you) the skin will protect the meat, keep it moist, and hold the thigh together, so it’s always better to cook chicken with the skin on, and then throw it out, or send to me. Once you remove the bone the thigh will lay flat, you can pound it a bit to make it wider and then it will hold more stuffing.  If you are serving this for company you can also skewer the thigh closed with a toothpick, and then remove that prior to serving.

I put a light coating of oil on the bottom of the baking dish, and drizzled some olive oil on the skin. I sprinkled some sea salt and smoked paprika on top and put the chicken into a 375°F oven for thirty minutes.  The seasoning in the packaged mix was flavorful, so I went light on the seasoning I added on top.  Because I made the quinoa right before I cooked the chicken I had to cool it quickly, so I put it in a stainless bowl, over another bowl filled with ice and water, and mixed it often which cooled it very fast.  What I didn’t do, but should have, is take out enough filling to use for the chicken, and leave the rest, so I ended up contaminating my cooked quinoa with raw chicken. If you do this you’ll need to reheat that filling (no matter what it is) to a temperature of 165ºF for it to be safe to eat.

Happy Friday!!