Apple Cider Chicken

If braising pork chops in fresh apple cider permeates them with strong apple flavor, we wondered if we could adapt the process to work equally well with chicken. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• For super-crisp skin, cook the chicken in a skillet, skin side down, until it is a deep, chestnut brown. When you finish it in the oven, be sure to leave them skin side up and ignore the urge to flip it halfway through cooking.
• We generally recommend a “low and slow” technique for braising chicken in the oven. In this case, cooking in an unusually hot oven for a shorter time kept the skin exceptionally crispy.
• Apple cider alone is simply not potent enough to impart the strong apple flavor we wanted. Fresh apples, apple brandy, and cider vinegar infused the chicken with apple goodness right down to the bone.
• For the sauce, Granny Smith apples were too sour, and several other varieties we tested turned to mush when cooked. In the end, we found Golden Delicious, Cortland, or Jonagold apples worked best.