Apple Cider Chicken

For super-crisp skin on our Apple Cider Chicken, we cooked the chicken in a skillet, skin side down, until it was a deep, chestnut brown. Although 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 crisp. Apple cider alone was simply not potent enough to impart the strong apple flavor we wanted for our Apple Cider Chicken recipe. 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.