Where did i go wrong with this recipe?

[3ormorecharacters]

I wanted to give this recipe (from the Good Housekeeping Christmas magazine) a trial run as I'm considering doing it for Christmas. I didn't follow it exactly as I didn't have everything thing in (e.g. dried thyme instead of fresh, orange juice rather than squeezed oranges). I also only did one leg, but kept the quantities for the marinade and stock the same. However when I opened the oven after about 3 hours the juices were pretty much gone, and what was left had turned black and stuck to the bottom of the roasting tin. Did I just not adjust the timings enough for the fact that I was only doing one leg, or does anything else look amiss about the recipe?

Did you cover it with a tight seal? I do t know how all the liquid would have evaporated although 250 ml of stock is tiny

That sounds like the temperature was too high. does your oven run hot - 130 fan is a very low temp so if your oven does run hot, it might be that you should put it even lower? Or did you not firmly seal with the foil? foil slows down cooking but if it's not sealed, that wouldn't work as well.

I just covered it with foil so maybe it wasn't a tight enough seal. I also feel like 250ml stock isn't a lot though.

Oh, and also, how large was the dish you used? if you only used one leg but a large dish, it would be a much thinner layer. These sort of slow roasted poultry things work better if they're fairly snugly in a dish if you've only got a bit of liquid.

I do slow roasted chicken thighs often with very little liwuid and it's fine - but if you want a sauce, it needs to be snug as otherwise the liquid does just disappear.

Thanks all!