HEALTHY IN A HURRY

Healthy Chicken Thigh Recipes: Pick of the Chick

Featured Recipe: Chicken Thighs with Pear & Leek Sauce

Flavor, frugality and other reasons to love chicken thighs

By Joyce Hendley; recipes from the EatingWell Test Kitchen EatingWell September/October 2008

Healthy Chicken Recipes

If you want to put a chicken dinner on the table quickly, you already know the words “skinless” and “boneless” are godsends. But choose thighs over those omnipresent breasts, and you’re in for a treat. First, you’ll save money, since thighs don’t command breasts’ premium prices. But the biggest bonus? More flavor, notes food scientist Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Darker meat “contains more materials with the potential for generating flavor,” he explains, including fat particles and substances that help break down flavor components. There’s also a little more iron and almost twice the zinc—not bad for a small increment in calories (177 calories and 6 grams fat for 3 ounces of thigh versus 138 calories and 3 grams fat for breast).

Without skin, thigh meat moves into “lean meat” territory; with a few easy snips you can remove even more fat (see box, page 38). But the slightly higher fat content is also a plus, since it makes thigh meat more forgiving of overcooking. Try thighs in any of these four quick recipes and you’ll be glad you crossed over to the dark side.

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Thigh Master: You’ll need about 11⁄2 pounds untrimmed boneless, skinless chicken thighs to serve four people. For recipes that call for one large thigh per person, buy them at the butcher counter; prepackaged thighs vary dramatically in size. Ask for four 6-ounce boneless, skinless thighs. To trim them well, we like to use kitchen shears to snip the fat away from the meat. After trimming, you’ll have four 4-ounce portions.

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4 Healthy Chicken Thigh Recipes

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USER COMMENTS — Add Your Comment

I use pre-frozen boneless, skinless chicken thighs for all of my chicken recipes. It saves money and has great flavor. I just defrost them in the microwave before use. They're great for EW Oven-Fried Chicken (leftovers make great sandwhiches) and they really add flavor to the Tea Trade Chicken recipe - making it even more outstanding. I do still prefer chicken breasts for salads.

Errin, Spokane, WA

Using hot water to thaw does not "nuke" the meat. A baggie, with as much air as possible removed, in hot water with a weight on top to hold it under will thaw almost anything in 5-10 minutes and it does not start the cooking process.

John, Cloudcroft, NM

Please - more low sodium recipes!!!

Leslie Palmer, Swampscott, MA

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