Crispy Chicken Thighs with Creamy Jalapeño Salsa

today's Taco Tuesday is about chicken thighs and if you have not joined the chicken thigh fanclub maybe today is what's going to do it for you chicken thighs are really juicy and delicious and they have a deeper and more complex flavor than a chicken breast I know we all went through that year where chicken breast because of its lower fat content was lauded but we need to graduate from that so I'm going to do a chicken thigh thing so let me show you what I've got going over here bone-in skin-on chicken thighs they're usually not trimmed this nicely you'll probably have to cut off some of the excess skin that you'll find but that will be to your benefit then lay them into a skillet I like working in a cast-iron skillet here because it will give me a better crispy skin a little bit of vegetable oil I like the high heat safflower oil when it looks like that and it turn the pieces over if you really want to gorgeous crispy skin and then to that I'm going to add some now these Arnab onions they sell these in every Mexican grocery store but if you can't find them then you can simply use green onions chopped up and I'm going to let these cook alongside the chicken as it finishes its cooking so those are about seven or eight minutes crisping the skin side and it'll take us about the same amount of time on the other side so we'll take this next year and put it all down in here I've got that over about a medium-high but I want to now turn it down to a kind of medium temperature to allow the onion to cook and I got a whole bunch of sliced garlic that's going to go into the skillet as well I need to now give it nice little coating of salt we want to make sure that the onions and the garlic don't burn in this process that's why I turn the temperature down but we've got the gorgeous crispy skin on those chicken thighs you know while that's finishing up let's make the salsa it's probably not a salsa that you've ever seen before which makes me really happy to be able to share it it's one that I learned down in Oaxaca southern part of Oaxaca and they make it all the time I don't know why it's not more popular here in the United States I have jalapeno chilies that have been boiled with a garlic and you let that cool off salted water we let that cool off and then drain it really well it needs to be cool to do this next step then take your jalapeno chilies and cut them into smaller pieces and put them into the blender along with the simmered and cooled garlic and then we're going to basically make an emulsified sauce out of this to make this sauce or salsa take the little center part out of the blender top turn this on and once it starts where once it starts getting blended we're going to add olive oil to it when you get about a cup of olive oil in there you see it looks like a mayonnaise but there's no egg in this one it is fully emulsified however I'm going to add to it some cilantro so put that torn-up in there that'll make it beautifully green and bring it to life with salt and lime juice so squeeze in a full lime here using the Mexican lime squeezer to both crush the skin and Express the juice boom of salt here put the top on and then blend it until all of that has been thoroughly mixed in and it will make it a beautiful green color as well all done very simple and super delicious let's take a look at what's going on in the skillet browned onions ok so the next step of course is to take the chicken thighs out and go down beside the bone like that and cut the meat off of the bone now this is not quite quite done and I kind of planned that because we didn't have quite the right amount of time to do this but that's the way that you would once they are completely done inside that's what you would do and we're going to go over here to a skillet where I've cut the meat off and mixed it with now see that beautiful crispy skin is what's going to make this so incredibly delicious and we've got all of the onions and the garlic cooked in there with it so now it's time to make the taco okay so a couple of tortillas now down on the plate and we'll soup in some of the chicken onions and garlic I think it's going to need a little bit of salt sprinkled over the top this would be a good place to use one of those finishing salts like Maldon salt that's in a flake what I have an easy-access here is some fine ground sea salt so I'm going to put that over the top of it and then we'll take our beautiful emulsified jalapeno cilantro salsa and just let that drizzle down on the top goes this is such a great salsa to get to know a little bit spicy but very very satisfying and useful for lots of things as well now what it's lacking for me is the freshness of cilantro on the top so I'm just going to put a bunch of cilantro sprigs or leaves I should say over the top of it and there you have it now that one looks so good have to dig right in

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 137,988

Rating: 4.9480333 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Bayless, Taco Tuesday, tacos, dinner, recipes, chef, weeknight dinners, salsa, chicken thighs, chicken tacos, tortillas, jalapeno, creamy salsa, salsa verde

Id: -3vzsX8UwjI

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2016