18th Century Drunken Chicken

Here's an oven based recipe that we converted to a campfire meal.  Pictures of that whole process can be found at MizRebecky's Adventures. Either in the oven or over the fire, this is very easy to do and tasty as well.

Ingredients for a single recipe (we made a quadruple batch):
4 chicken legs-thighs (chicken joints)  - we used chicken thighs for easy cooking & cleanup.
1/4 pint cider  - we used woodchuck cider.
2 teaspoons English mustard powder  - we used pre-made powder. You can make your own by pulverizing equal amounts of brown  and white mustard seeds.
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon oil - we used olive oil.
2 tablespoons honey

 The recipe says to put your chicken pieces in a dish (in a single layer). we were making drunken chicken for many people in a dutch oven, so we piled it all in one pot. I suspect single layer you would get more of a glazed result than we did.

Then combine the remaining ingredients, pour over the chicken and allow to stand for a minimum of 1 hour. Ours soaked for about an hour and a half hile we were off doing other tasks.

Oven bake the chicken slowly in a large oven proof dish/pan for approximately 1 hour, basting the joints periodically as they cook.We put much more marinade in ours, as fire can be much less predictable than on oven, and we didn't want it to dry out. So no basting was done, but periodic stirring was essential. I think we cooked ours more like an hour and a half. The chicken was incredibly tender and tasty.

the recipe suggests Serving hot with steamed greens and mashed or baked potatoes. We had boiled potatoes and a salad to round ours out. We discussed doing it again and maybe having dumplings on top, but that will only work if you approached it with plenty of marinade in the pot.


*The original recipe, done in an oven, can be found at http://www.food.com/recipe/18th-century-drunken-english-somerset-cider-chicken-with-honey-238815