No one likes salmonella

The Lost Art of Chicken Thighs

"They're cheaper than chicken breasts so they're probably not as good."

"I dunno...they look pretty fatty to me."

"I'm a breast guy, not a thigh man."

I'm not sure why chicken thighs have gotten such a bad rap these days, but for someone that's just starting out in the kitchen, they're one of the easier meats to cook.

Reason 1: They're forgiving - I'm about 15% scared shitless of cooking chicken for other people. Red meat you can undercook. Fish you can undercook. Chicken? Nope. And as a result, I tend to cook the shit out of it (which usually means it's dry).  It's an irrational fear (and I know I'm being too self-critical); however, if I'm scared, then a young 24-year-old, trying to impress a girl, will be scared (well...or oblivious). Chicken thighs are forgiving, you can overcook them a little and they won't dry out. 

Reason 2: They're sneaky - That dark thigh meat is naturally flavorful and the small, intertwined pieces of fat just add to that flavor. Everyone knows that a dry-aged ribeye steak has more natural flavor than a New York strip. Why? The beautiful beautiful fat marbling of course...

Bone-in chicken thighs? Even better.

With just salt, pepper, and olive oil you can rock a pretty solid meal. You don't have to go all la cuisine de français on her (spending a whole paycheck on random spices and aromatics that you'll use just once while the rest becomes a 4th-grade science project in your fridge). So the question is, why wouldn't you pick a food ingredient that's already helping you out?

Trim the fat!

Reason 3: They're cheaper - Between the $10 shots of Petron and the $15 Bear Fights, food have become marginalized by our alcohol habits. I get it and I know, I'm in the same boat. So get happy, chicken thighs are typically $2-$3 per lb cheaper than their counterparts.

Reason 4: They're healthy - I don't buy the "it's too fatty argument." 75% of us ingest pounds of sugar and fake sugar, devour fried balls of dough, and pretend pork belly isn't just a gloried stack of fifteen glued-together slices of bacon. If you're conscientious (read: hypersensitive) trim the fat and/or buy skinless. And for this "Age of Nutritionalism" (cue Michael Pollan) that we live in, settle down, they're as nutritionally equivalent as their chicken breast counterpart.


Chicken Thigh Ideas:
If you're reading this far, I'm hoping I've "inceptioned" you into buying chicken thighs.  To help you out, here's a list of various meals that I've thrown together with a package of chicken thighs. In most cases, I've used what I already had in my pantry. Salt, pepper, and olive oil should always be staples. Red and white onions, garlic...maybe some ancho powder or Slap Ya Mama seasoning. BBQ sauce or soy sauce. An electric grill, a cast-iron skillet, or a just a motherfuckin' pot.

(Recipe links in the coming days)

Grilled BBQ chicken thigh w/ avocado, grilled onions, scallions on an onion bun. No pots, all on grill

My ultimate lazy man's, one pot, fake Southwestern chicken dish

Again, a one pot meal. Braised chicken in cast-iron skillet then roasted in the oven

Simmering chicken thighs in a reducing a white wine, red pepper & onion sauce

Simmered chicken thighs w/ caramelized red pepper and onions, wild grain rice, and yellow squash

Grilled chicken thighs with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Ancho seasoning

Tip of the Day: Clean your damn place

Back in the day whenever I had to stay late for work, every-so-often our company would pay for dinner. Our project manager's view was that the standard cornucopia of vending machine goodies - Fritos, Smartfood white cheddar popcorn, and Cheetos - did more to stain fingers and keyboards than provide sustenance for tired brains. We would order delivery. Nearly always Thai. And nearly always from the same restaurant.

In retrospect, the black, ballistic-quality, circular plastic containers packed densely with thick wavy rice noodles, chinese brocooli, and sliced chicken provided more of a "coma-effect" than a "work-effect," but we ate it. It was damn tasty, and it was my only way of rationalizing the extra billable hours without overtime.

** Fast forward 7 years **

One of the worst things you can ever do for yourself is to read a county health code inspection list of failed local restaurants. Naturally, all your favorite places are on that list and it becomes an executioner's song for all of your perennial late night jaunts. It's almost as bad as this story (before I learned that it was just an urban legend).

So OF COURSE, my favorite, extended-work Thai restaurant was on it. Bugs. Roaches. Dirtiness.

...Fuck.

My mind was racing. "Was the number of consumed minced Pad See Ew bugs larger than the number of spiders that I've swallowed in my sleep?!?"

...Fuck.

Naturally I've stopped eating there.

(And before I get emails from the pundits out there, yes I understand that no one cooks in a sterile environment. Yes, I know that when I'm camping and grilling outdoors, a dropped steak on the ground just adds "protein"...so I know... I'm not advocating super-bug creating, antibiotic hand sanitizer land - I understand that, but it's still gross)

So how does this relate to cooking for a girl at your house, you ask?


CLEAN YOUR KITCHEN.


AND YOUR BATHROOM.


You may have spent days mustering up the nerve to ask her out, hours rifling through food ideas on recipes.com, and 5 minutes tending the microwave but that means nothing, NOTHING, if you don't clean your place.

You may be used to the post-shave scruff lining your sink, the hair on the bathroom tile, and the grease stains on the kitchen counter, but she's not. Its a new environment to her. Its like she's visiting your restaurant. You would never take her to a restaurant that had dirty bathrooms, used a single cutting board to cut both chicken and vegetables, and looked like a 3rd year college house. So why start now?

Clean your shit up.  You've invested hours into this date, why ruin it with something so trivial?

Simple Cooking: Pan Fried Baby Artichokes Recipe

Lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper.

None of this fancy sauce reduction bullshit. No cream. No whisks. No elaborate spices.

Pan-fried baby artichokes are legit. They'll make you look like a professional and they're balls easy to cook.  Three steps: Prep. Boil. Fry. The biggest difficulty you'll have is finding them at the grocery story and then convincing yourself to buy them.

Although, they do look like scary little mother fuckers.... Don't feed them after midnight

Ingredients

• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper
• Lemon (cut in half)
• 10-12 Baby Artichokes (Baby artichokes NOT the bigger, "regular" ones)

Like most things on this site you can modify this recipe and improvise. Add heat (cayenne) Or Mint. Instead of "Prep, boil, fry," try "Prep, grill" or "Prep, fry." Add small pieces of bacon. Top it with Parmesan cheese. Do whatever.

Recipe
1. Prep: Clean, shuck, and slice
The first time I tried baby artichokes, I didn't listen to the instructions about peeling off *all* of the dark, thick leaves. I was greedy. I thought that leaving more leaves meant more of the artichoke to eat.

Nope. Mistake. Tough spiky leaves aren't that tasty... And instead of having more to eat, I had less, like, um, zero.

1. Peel off the outer green leaves until you get to the softer yellow leaves inside
2. Take a serrated knife and cut off a half inch from the top and trim the bottom stalk so it doesn't look like a dead Christmas tree trunk
3. Slice them in half lengthwise

I peeled the center one too much, the right one was perfect

Capped and sliced. Ready for boiling

2. Boil
The goal here is to cook the artichokes just enough and therefore allowing you to easily crisp them in a frying pan.

1. Fill a small pot with water, salt the water, and squeeze half a lemon into the pot
2. Bring to a boil, throw in the artichokes, and reduce the heat to a light boil
3. Cook for about 3-4 minutes (until just tender but have some resistance against a knife)
4. Once tender, remove from the liquid and place on a plate. Lightly pat with a paper towel (not necessary but it helps fry them better)

Um...disregard the breaded smelts

3. Fry

1. Heat a few splashes of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high.
2. If you want, you can throw in a few pieces of finely chopped garlic, let the garlic cook for about a minute (until you can start smelling the garlic) (not a required step)
3. Add the artichokes to the skillet and fry them until they get crispy. (Roughly 3-4 minutes or until they're nicely browned)
4. Once crispy, remove, add some salt and pepper, and serve with the other lemon half

Getting crispy. As you guessed, its not an exact science

These were much better than my breaded and fried smelts*....

*I have a habit of buying new shit at the grocery store and trying to cook it. That night, it was smelts. It was my first time buying smelts. I've since decided that I don't like smelts.

Breaking out of the monotony of cooking (and dating)

As guys, we have no problem buying the same pair of brown shoes over and over again. Our closet is lined with dark blue, light blue, royal blue, navy blue, and dark blue (again) of the same shirt in the same brand that we’ve been wearing since we graduated from college. We go with what works, what is comfortable, so why change a good thing?

We do the same thing with dating. The same go-to first date restaurant, the same go-to second date bar, and the same third-date, home-cooked meal. We're creatures of comfort, creatures of habit.

Different girl? Same restaurant.

Another girl? Same restaurant.

Third girl? Same restaurant.

I mean, if there was a frequent flyer program for our "first date" restaurant, we'd be nearing George-Clooney-Up-In-The-Air flight status (sans Vera Farmiga's sultry company).

But something happens when you keep going to the same place - You fall into a groove. And not necessarily a good one. The edge is gone. The excitement is gone. It just becomes another standard first date. And your energy reflects that.

There’s an easy fix though. Just go to another restaurant. Try something new. They all serve beer and wine. They all serve edible food. Looking for some new spots to check out? My girls over at Doing the District have an entire section dedicated to dating locales in and around D.C.

Things get a little more complicated when it comes to cooking, though. Let me explain.

***

A while ago, a girl playfully quipped, "You can cook for me but you can't cook me anything that I've read about on your blog."

She was 98% serious.

Well...balls.

I'm not an executive chef with years of "some" training de Français. I want to cook in my comfort zone. I need to cook in my comfort zone. However, I understand where she's coming from - It’s not that I've cooked that same meal before, it's that I've cooked that same meal before with somebody else.

The fix?

(Don't write a food blog?)

If it's the first time that you're cooking for her, don't worry about it. You're gonna be nervous (that's good, it implies that you care) and recipe/food exploration probably isn't the best idea. Rest on your laurels and cook within your comfort zone. The adrenaline of your first home-cooked date will provide enough energy. But mix things up a bit. She knows that you’ve blogged about cooking fresh salmon in that Asian soy marinade? Use the same marinade (because its fucking awesome) but use a different type of protein.

And then if you’re lucky enough to cook for her again (now that you're more relaxed), here are a few tips:

• Follow concepts not recipes - You know that salmon takes 7 minutes to cook. Grill, bake, or saute it. Add lemon and butter or a Cajun dry rub. And then choose 1-2 vegetables from your arsenal of sides.
• Try something where you have absolutely no fucking clue how to make (but tell her that and do it together) - Donning leather work gloves, I shucked live oysters with a cheese knife right after reading Google search results from "How not to impale oneself when shucking oysters." Some ideas include:
• Exec-level: Hand-rolled sushi. Freshly-made pasta. Shucked oysters. Handmade Ravioli. Anything from Iron Chef.
• Sous Chef: Homemade pizza. Grilled pizza. Live Maine lobster. Whole fish. Anything that takes 5 hours of broth making.
• Novice: Stuffed Shells. Lasagna. Crock pot roast.

But more importantly (and in both of these scenarios) don't try to re-create memories. Our memories have a funny way of skewing themselves after the fact (positively or negatively). Chances are, if you go to the same place over and over, or cook the same meal time and time again, you're just going to end up disappointed. Don't try to re-live memories. Instead, create new ones in new places and with fresh ideas.