Last night I made chicken teriyaki from the new Cook's Illustrated. I am not normally a big chicken teriyaki fan- I find it insipid. (Okay, did I really just type that? "I find it insipid"??? Who am I? Sorry, y'all. I'm all hepped up on cold medication.) My husband, however, loves it, and the Cook's Illustrated recipe called for buying bone in, skin on chicken thighs and then deboning them. Some people would read those directions and run (and Cook's appeases those people by giving directions for leaving the bone in), however, I got very excited by the prospect of boning chicken thighs myself. And it's really not that hard, provided you have a sharp knife. I remember in junior high biology being quite annoyed when dissecting that the frogs we had did not EXACTLY MATCH the pictures. Now, though, I find it interesting to learn how each chicken thigh is not quite the same but how they all share the same characteristics. Which is I guess what we were supposed to learn about frogs back then.

Anyway, I quite digress. The recipe, once you bone the thighs, is easy. Slash the skin and broil for 9-14 minutes. (I do not have the in-oven broiler this recipe is meant for, so I cooked them on high heat for a while and then broiled them in my drawer broiler until the skin got super crisp.) Make a sauce with soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, and mirin and cornstarch, which you boil and reduce down to a syrup. Slice the thighs into strips and pour the sauce over. The sauce was good, too. Not nearly so sweet as any teriyaki I've ever had, so even I liked it.