Candy is dandy but meat is sweet! In Orgrimmar, lollipops mean two things. First, of course, is the delicious hard candy on a stick. But as one Orc guard pointed out to me, lollipops are you just flavoring your own spit as a snack. Charming. And now I can’t look at hard candy the same way.
The second kind of lollipop is a way of preparing poultry. By wedging the meat down towards the head of the bone, it gives you bare bone to hold onto and all the meat at one end for better access. Yes, this sounds simple enough — and it is — but it makes it pretty convenient, especially with the bigger cuts of meat like plainstrider.
But strider is a bit of a pain to wrestle with, so today we’re going to work with chicken!
Here we have the setup for spicy barbecue chicken lollipops. I went over how to make the spicy sauce in last week’s recipe, Stormwind Mock-Smoked Ribs. The most important part of this recipe is that you have a sauce you like (a Pandaren Teriyaki or a sweet Goblin barbecue are both good choices) and it doesn’t have to be from hand. Experiment!
Now to the technique. First, get a chicken leg.
For this, we’re not going to remove the skin, but you certainly can. What we’re interested in is the narrow end. In case you’ve never seen one whole, the big fat part is where the equivalent to their calf muscle connects to the knee, and the bottom part is where it connects to the scaly foot area. It was unfortunately pointed out to me that Draenei have legs similar to a strider and now this whole situation is looking a lot more uncomfortable.
Moving on!
The trick to this is to cut all the way around the top of the bone. We want to release the skin as well as the tendons, which means make sure your knife is sharp. Be careful, we don’t want to skin your fingers in the process. See those white tendons up there? They’re about as thick as a large rubber band and we want to cut through all of them.
Some pieces won’t want to come away easily. That’s fine, you can be rough with it. The animal is already dead, it can’t feel anything. Word to the wise, be careful and make sure your hands are dry. I managed to throw my knife enough times that I was almost removed from the cooking tent.
Once the skin and tendons are all cut, grasp the end of the joint and push all the meat down towards the opposite end. Again, get rough with it, you’re not going to hurt it.
Nice! Bare bone and a happy meat lolly on the other end. If you’re cooking for Humans, Elves or any race that calls itself ‘civilized’ with a straight face, go ahead and use shears to trim the tendons. I was cooking for orcs and trolls, so they didn’t care. It doesn’t hurt anything, it’s literally just for apperances.
Now do that with all the rest of them until you have enough to feed a small army or at least one orc and one troll.
Don’t be surprised if they don’t want to stand up on their own — that’s fine. They’re ok to lean on each other. Heat your oven to 425F/220C and bake them for 45 minutes. You want the internal temperature to read at least 165F/75C
With poultry, I always err on the side of overcooked versus under.
Not quite there! If the fat that drips off (which will be minimal) starts to smoke, just pour a bit of water at the bottom of the tray. Once they’re to heat, take the, out one by one and coat in the sauce of your choice.
Then cook for another 10-15 minutes, long enough to set the sauce. And that’s all there is to it!
I like this with mook and cheez and a nice salad from scavenged greens. The salad was wild carrots, carrot greens, radish, radish greens and dandelion greens. Because wurk-wurk deserves good food. Also eat your damn greens.
Ingredients:
- Poultry legs
- Sauce of choice
Instructions:
- Cut around the narrow joint of the drumstick, careful to sever both flesh and tendons
- Gripping the top joint, push skin and meat down towards the bottom of the joint
- If desired, trim the tendons
- Bake at 425F/220C for 45 minutes or until internal temperature reads 165F/75C
- Coat with sauce of choice and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes
Feed the Horde 