Crispy Sous Vide Chicken Legs with Chimichurri and Fork-Mashed Purple Sweet Potatoes

My favorite way to cook chicken legs is using dry sous vide. This technique gets the chicken evenly cooked all the way through with crispy skin. Cooking the chicken without steam makes it much easier to achieve the crispy skin than with traditional sous vide cooking. It’s a two-stage cook, and since we’ll be finishing the chicken at a high oven temperature, we’re going to target a slightly lower doneness (145°F or 63°C) for the sous vide stage. Then in the browning stage, we’ll target 155°F (68°C) to ensure it’s cooked to a safe temp. The chicken is seasoned with salt and pepper, and then I added za’atar, which is a really nice Middle Eastern spice blend made with lemon rind, herbs, and sesame seeds. I like to serve the chicken with mashed purple sweet potatoes for a healthy carbohydrate. I steam the sweet potatoes in the oven in their skins to keep all of the nutrients inside, then mash with olive oil and lemon. Finally, I top it all off with a citrus chimichurri.