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In my journeys on the Web and through my cookbooks, I'm always finding recipes for chicken with delectable-looking sauces, vegetable combinations, and the like.

Trouble is, many of them call for boneless breasts, and I'm a dark-meat person who prefers bone-in thighs or drumsticks.

Is there a how-to for adapting recipes for boneless breasts to bone-in legs?

(Kudos to my sister who gets a small turkey, rather than a turkey breast, when she hosts a small gathering for Thanksgiving.)

I often sub chicken thighs/legs for breasts.. just need to adapt the cooking time ..add around 10 - 15 minutes cooking time, or use a thermometer to guage internal temp.. which for USDA guidelines is 165F/ 74C

Agree with Debkellie, just use chicken thighs, and check they are done, I don't usually find I need extra cooking time but I do, as she does, always use a probe thermometer.

To use bone-in thighs or legs in place of skinless boneless breast you will probably need a little more by weight, but I go by the number of portions - if the recipe says it serves four, I use enough chicken for 4, whatever the cut.

Using drumsticks or whole legs you might find you have barely enough sauce or gravy to coat, as they are bulkier with the bone and the slightly awkward shape, but it's not usually an issue.

Like debkellie and StokeySue I have always subbed in chicken thighs for chicken breast with lovely results.  If a dish calls for a skinless chicken breast, I just use boneless skinless chicken thighs and for chicken breast with skin on I use regular chicken thighs.  Again, a meat thermometer is my guide to the cooking time and I check to make sure I am using comparable weights of chicken.

I cook my chicken breasts to internal temperature of 165 F but since reading Cook's Illustrated information, I now cook thighs and drumsticks to 195F.  This is esp so with bbq or smoked chicken thighs and drumsticks. Before, I noticed thighs were stringy when cooked to 165F.  

Bittrette, there are two things I would watch out for. First, the thighs will be richer than the breasts, so you might want to either adjust the richness of any sauce or compensate for the richness with the other parts of the meal. Second, I would watch for vegetables in the dish that might overcook with the extra cooking time; depending on the vegetables you might cut them in larger pieces, others you might want to substitute or skip.

Rinshin, why do thighs have to be cooked to a higher temperature? Can you explain further?