NEVER Fry Your Chicken Thighs Again — Try This Old ITALIAN Trick Instead

My mother Filomena never once fried a chicken thigh. In her kitchen in Bensonhurst they went into the oven, skin up, on a bed of rosemary and garlic and lemon peel, and they came out with skin that cracked and meat still wet at the bone. I have cooked them her way for thirty years and I have never gone back to a pan. In this one I go through eight old Italian tricks, counted down from eight to one, and each one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. Bone-in and skin-on, how to trim and flatten the skin, the overnight salt in the refrigerator with no cover and no oil, why the garlic and rosemary go underneath, the real oven temperature, the space between each thigh, the closed door, the lemon that waits until the end, and the argument about 165 degrees that costs most people their dinner. No frying pan. Nothing measured. Just the old way, slowly. So tell me: what goes around the chicken in your house, potatoes, peppers, or onions?