"Thanksgiving Style" Roasted Chicken Legs

I made some chicken legs for Activity Days tonight.  We did a "Gratitude Dinner" for Thanksgiving.  Our new leader had the great idea of having chicken legs instead of roasting a turkey or chicken.  It was a fabulous idea, and the chicken turned out YUMMY! 

Here is the recipe:

Chicken legs  I bought them at Safeway, so they were a good quality.  I think that helped! (I made literally ten pounds of chicken legs - great sale at 88 cents per pound.)

Take the skin off the chicken if you want.  For the most part, the skin cooked down and peeled back on this chicken, but I think if you wanted to go through the trouble it would be just as good because I added "fat" in the marinade and during cook time. 

Sprinkle chicken liberally with Adobo Seasoning.  I am sure that this can be found in Utah, you may have to hunt a little but it should be in your "Mexican" or "Latin" food isle.  If you don't have this, I'd use Jane's Crazy Salt or Seasoning Salt.  Rub the seasoning into the chicken.

Place chicken in plastic bags.  I put approximately 5 pounds of chicken in each bag.
Marinade: Per bag of chicken
Pour 1/4 C vegertable oil
1/4 C soy sauce
1/2 C mesquite marinade
Let the chicken marinate for a least one hour, longer if you can.

(I am using both marinade and marinate to describe what I did here.  I'm not sure which is grammatically correct so please reserve judgement.)

Line baking sheets with foil.  There's no reason to make your clean up time any more difficult than necessary.  Place chicken on the baking sheet, then take a half stick of margarine and dot it "here and there" around the chicken.  Yes, go ahead and add it!  I think that kept the chicken tender and juicy.

Roast chicken in the oven at 375 degrees for about an hour and a half.  (You probably don't need to cook it that long if you're not making TONS of chicken, so check it.  You don't want your chicken to dry out!)  About halfway through cooking time, turn the chicken so that both sides carmelize and get that yummy brown outside.

When you pull the chicken out of the oven, sprinkle both the chicken and the cooking juice with some garlic powder and garlic salt to taste.  Surprisingly, I'm going to say use caution adding the salt.  Both the Adobo and soy sauce will add the salt taste to it, but being me I thought it needed a tad bit more so I added garlic salt.

It was no accident there were three specialty salts sitting on my stove a few days ago.  Now, there is only one jar of mixed up specialty salts.  Sigh.... all I could salvage.

I made this chicken early in the day and then placed in in the crockpot on warm.  I poured the cooking juice over the top of it to keep the chicken from drying out.  My Activity Day Girls and my own kids LOVED this chicken.   I don't normally make "chicken with bones", but I think I'm going to start.  This was cheap and good.