Remember to remove your chicken legs out of the packaging, pat dry before cooking. Pre heat your oven to 200 oc temperature fan assisted or 215 oc without a fan
Season the chicken just prior to roasting. Choose a large, heavy based roasting tray, ideally with deep sides and handles for easy movement. Massage a little softened butter under the skin of the jointed chicken then season with good quality fine sea salt.
Make a trivet by roughly chopping equal amounts of onion, carrot and celery or my preferred choice of celeriac, the root of the celery plus a bay leaf, sprig of thyme and a few black peppercorns, another nice addition can be a lemon cut in half and popped onto the tray.
Place the legs skin side up onto the trivet which should line the base of the tray. Place in centre of oven and roast for 40 minutes reaching a core temperature of minimum 75 oc. Remove from oven and pop onto a clean tray and keep warm by covering with a sheet of tin foil then resting for a few moments, leaving the roasted vegetables in the tray for the gravy.
For the gravy I make up 300 ml of essential cuisine chicken stock, then deglaze roasting tray with this stock stirring all the caramelised juices from the tray, then pass through a fine sieve pushing all the juices from the vegetables into a clean sauce pan, bring to the simmer and thicken if required by whisking in a teaspoon of corn flour mixed with a little cold water and reduce till you reach a rich glossy gravy.
