Baked Chicken Legs

I made the most wonderful chicken drumsticks last week.  That's pretty boastful, isn't it?  But if you had tasted them you would agree.  I didn't realize how good they were until I was at work eating lunch and only had my cell phone to take pictures with. The pictures were not blog-worthy.

Last night I made them again.  And took pictures.  And now you can see what I'm talking about.

I started out with fresh (thawed) chicken drumsticks, rinsed them with water, and patted them dry.  I then mixed up a batch of coating in a Ziploc bag. 

I combined flour, minced onion, garlic seasoning, parmesan seasoning, red pepper seasoning, and some chili powder.  Can you tell I like a zing?

I put each piece in the bag and did the hokey pokey until they were all coated evenly.  I placed them in a glass baking dish and sprinkled some "Onion Crunch" on top.  This stuff is so good.  It's made by Strub's and I bought it at Costco.

I put the dish in the oven at about 325 degrees and baked it for 45 minutes.  I find that if you cook it covered it's a bit too wet so I leave it uncovered to get crispy.  And it doesn't dry out as long as you don't leave it in too long.

Here we go, fresh out of the oven. 

Look at that colour!  I took out the chicken and added some water to the baking pan to soften up the stuff on the bottom, then made a roux with just water and flour, and used the "drippings" in the pan to make a gravy.  Oh my, so good!

I also sautéd some mushrooms and kale, sprinkled with a bit of parmesan seasoning. Do you eat kale?  I like that it doesn't go mushy like spinach does when you sauté it.

Chicken waiting to be plated.

Are you hungry yet?

How about now?

Yeah, you know you want some.

I also made some boneless pork chops in the slow cooker.  This was a bit of an accident as I thought it was a roast.  It looked like one solid piece of meat when we bought it, but it was actually sliced and then put back together and shrinkwrapped.  Strange.

Anyway, I made up the same coating mix as for the chicken, gave each chop a shake in the bag and placed them in the slow cooker.  Towards the end the seasoning was low on flour so the last chops are mostly coated in minced onion. 

I added some sliced mushrooms and let the slow cooker go to work.

They only had to cook for 2 hours or so.  Really fast. Sorry no pretty plating shots.  Just a good ol' margarine container. 

However I did risk a concussion taking this picture.  My hair kept falling over the viewfinder so I tossed it out of the way and smacked my head into the microwave shelf.  Yeah. Oww.  Also, I'm number one. (Tom's code for "yeah, you're clumsy.")

Do you do a lot of experimentation when cooking or do you stick to the recipe?  I rarely look in a recipe book - I like to just throw things together and see what happens.

~~~~~~~

I'm linking up here this week!