6lbs of chicken quarters, how should I cook these?

If its the leg/thigh you can fry, bake, steam, make soup/gumbo...... pretty versatile piece of chicken with lots of flavor and it stays nice and juicy when cooked . I like them on the BBQ pit with my favorite rub (Smokin' Guns mild) with some sauce brushed on in the last 15 minutes.

Season them with whatever you like, put in a preheated 350 oven and cook. Almost Impossible for anybody to mess it up!:lol:

right now what comes to mind is to make potted meat in aspic of the french style, and i cant remember what region but i can get back to you on that

you use things like chicken quarters, veal shoulder, cow foot and hare quarters

u simmer the meats in wine, the cow foot simemrs longer along with maybe soem pork skin and lardoins, then the meat and juice is poured intoa casserole and covered with pork skin and it is baked for a while with bayleaf and thyme and parsley

then it is left to cool and u get potted emat in aspic, pretty cool


but simpler awesome dishes besides barbeque are

jerk chicken

tandoori chicken

i am no tandoori expert, but htere is a great jerk recipe at jamaica travel and culture.


just be aware that real jamaican jerk is very hot so be careful with hte peppers if u cant take it

i liek a healthy ammount of ginger

pineapple is a cool addition to a jerk sauce/marinade

as for tandoori, im no expert, but it is good

tandoori should be eaten with raw onions that have soaked in salted water and had exess fierce juice squeezxed out

this moistens the somewhat dry tandoori meat.

also i liek to eat tandoori with naan or pratha...

u could also make a giant pot of stewed chicken

french people know a thing or two about stews

trinidad style stew chicken is alsost exactly a french recipe except that they put in cillantro (wel shadon beni/culantro) along with the prsley and chive and garlic

they do what the french do, lightly brown onions and add sugar to carmelize, also brown the meat

then make the stew with the herbs (bayleaf and parsley if wanted) along with the cillantro, no hot pepper unless u want it hot, trinidad has soem of the hottest cooking this side of mexico and india but their stew chicken is not fiery...

stew liquid can have red wine or beer


good stuff


chicnese have red cooked dishes that are good

also chicken in wine is cool

I've done these alot lately bc I've been able to get them 10lbs for $4.88! Not as good as your 39/lb but close!

anyways, the 3 most recent meals i've done with them...

1st rub skin with garlic, pepper, brown sugar mix and throw in the oven at about 300 degrees and let it cook and cook and cook...once the skin is browned and slightly crisp, i slapped some homemade bbq sauce on it. I brushed more bbq sauce a few more times during the cooking and another good brush once it was done. chicken just fell off the bone. Probably baked it for 2hrs, not sure didnt time it.

2nd : just a good "italian herb rub" and again, baked at 300-325 for more than an hour, prolly closer to 2 hrs. nice crisp skin, juicy fall apart chicken

3rd : found some "french rub" by McCormicks, so i thought i would try it. nice flavors...rubbed that on the skin. made a stuffing of rice, sauted onions and celery and stuffed under the skin. baked at 350 for 45min-1hr. made a quick "gravey" with pan drippings. my wife took it to some "book club" (or thats what they call it) and all the ladies wanted the recipe...uhmmm, so now i need to come up with a recipe for it! haha

I've also been using these lately....didn't get as good a price as either of you $5.90 for 10 lbs. lol

I boiled them and made chicken salad for lunches, casseroles, pulled chicken bbq (would have been a lot better grilled or smoked), and a strange pasta sauce using cooked chicken instead of ground beef. It was okay as a sauce but was better when I cooked rotini, poured the sauce on top, sprinkled with parm and mozarella and baked for about 45 minutes.

If you have a pressure canner, you can can it. Pack chicken in sterilized jars, add a little salt, 2-3 whole allspice corns and any other seasonings you like. Process according to canner instructions. Comes in handy for a qick meal. Dump in a pan, add dumplings and there you are. Great for making soup fast too.

Be a little careful with leg quarters, not so much on the cooking as such, but be sure to go over them before using. One reason they're cheap is that they're cut on a saw very roughly, and this can have some undesirable results. Some things to watch out for, that you'll likely want to fix:

1. An enormous flap of excess skin folded underneath

2. Odd chunks of liver and other guts attached up at the hip joint, unless you like their flavor in what you're making

3. Splintered bits along the section of backbone attached to the hip, which should be removed unless you are making stock with the quarters -- nobody should be served chicken bone splinters!

4. I would strongly advise you to pierce well into both the knee and the hip joints before cooking, as these can otherwise hold out a remarkably long time and you can end up with bloody joints and burnt tips -- ick!

When I see one of these big sales on leg quarters, I usually plan to spend a little time disjointing the hips and trimming the legs before freezing or otherwise processing. You end up with a pile of weird bone scraps for the stock jar (and flaps of fat for making schmaltz, if you're into that) and a bit of mess, but when you go to cook, legs handle immensely better than quarters in almost all cases. Long-cooked things that fall off the bone are the major exception, but be extra careful about bone splinters there, as the splinters can easily get missed.