Stuffed chicken legs
Stuffed chicken legs look lovely on a celebration table. You can stuff and freeze them ahead, ready to cook when needed. Try mushrooms, rice, dried fruit, liver or other offal in the filling for different flavor combinations. For New Year I chose prunes, which I think go particularly well with chicken.
For 8 skins there is enough meat from 5 legs.
Several skins can be prepared in advance and frozen. And on the day of cooking, just defrost the required amount.
I had a very soft, fleshy prune. I didn't pre-steam it.
Before you start stuffing chicken legs, you need to prepare. The most important and time-consuming thing in this recipe is to remove the skin from the legs (we will actually stuff it) and strip the meat from the bones (the basis of the future minced meat). For stuffing, choose whole pieces of chicken with the skin intact. To work, we need two knives: a large cleaver to cut through the bone, and a small or utility knife to remove the skin and meat from the bone.
Thaw the chicken legs completely and rinse with cool water. Working on a board, gently pull the skin down toward the joint, using a small knife where needed. Take care not to tear it.
We cut the bone near the joint with a large knife. This is the kind of blank we should get. Skin with joint and meat on bone.
Place the skins in a separate bowl. It is better to cover them with film and put them in the refrigerator while we prepare the minced meat so that they do not dry out.
Cut off all the meat. We clean the bone.
That's how much meat we got. I’ll say right away: for 8 skins there is enough meat from 5 legs.
Grind the meat in a meat grinder or blend it in a blender.
Cut the onion into cubes and fry in a small amount of vegetable oil until transparent. Let cool.
Cut the prunes into small pieces.
Grate the cheese on a coarse grater.
Onions, cheese and prunes
combine with minced chicken and mix. Add salt, pepper, a couple of cloves of garlic. First grate the garlic or pass it through a press.
Lay a piece of skin on the board with the longer side underneath and fill with the chicken mixture. Do not pack it so tightly that it bursts during baking, but add enough to make a well-filled roll.
Approximately to this state.
Now we wrap the skin in an envelope and hide the edges so that the leg does not fall apart during cooking. First we wrap and hide one edge,
then another.
You should have a neat chicken leg shape. At this point you can freeze the stuffed legs if not cooking them straight away.
Place the stuffed legs in a deep baking tray, seam side down. Lightly grease the bottom with vegetable oil if you are afraid it will burn. I greased the legs themselves with a mixture of sour cream and mayonnaise. But this is not necessary.
Place in a preheated oven for 40-50 minutes. Temperature 200°C.
The legs are ready. Bon appetit! If you liked the recipe, share it on social networks.