My sister is a culinary genius. If you go to her house, expect to be blown away by the food: fried fish, grilled steaks, smoked ribs. She has a special talent for making even vegetables taste delicious.

She will tell you it was easy. She will explain, “I just added chicken stock and seasonings and cooked the water out of it and then added a little bacon and …”

The problem is, she cooks by feel. Or, as the young people say these days, by vibes.

So she will give me a “recipe,” and I will ask a million questions.

“OK, but how much?” I’ll ask. “And for how long?”

“Until it looks right,” she will answer. “And until it’s done.”

I’m a pretty flexible cook, but my “looks right” and “is done” are frequently different from hers. It takes me a few tries to get it right.

That’s why I was glad I happened to be on the phone with her the last time I tried one of her recipes.

She’d sent me a photo of her son looming over a pan of chicken and this text: “skinned chicken legs sprinkled with lemon pepper and cornstarch, sprayed with olive oil and baked at 425 convection 1 hour.”

That was actually quite a lot of information, but I still had questions.

So while we talked, I asked her all those questions.

And I still screwed it up. Pretty well straight away, actually.

For one thing, I didn’t have any lemon pepper seasoning. I used Kinder’s Cowboy Butter seasoning instead (an excellent substitution, as it turns out).

Then I completely forgot to add any oil. I remembered it suddenly about halfway through the cook time and quickly pulled the sheet pan from the oven to spritz my chicken legs with some cooking oil.

Thankfully, dark-meat, bone-in chicken is remarkably difficult to mess up, so it turned out OK in spite of my mistakes.

But I’d also used the wrong parchment paper. And by “wrong parchment paper,” I mean that the rest of the box of this particular store-brand parchment paper immediately went into the trash can at the end of the meal.

The chicken actually stuck worse to the paper than I’ve ever had it stick to a pan. At least the pan is rigid and won’t peel up along with the chicken. Not so the paper. Tiny scraps of paper were stuck all over the legs. It looked like I’d tried to shave them.

So I have vowed never again to waste my money and time on subpar parchment paper.

I’m buying nonstick parchment paper from here on out for the same reasons I buy exclusively nonstick foil these days. Life is too short.

CHRISTY’S WINGLIKE LEGS

Ingredients:
1 pack chicken legs (Check the price; in my store, the large pack is cheaper than the small pack, not just by the pound but by the total price for the pack.)
Seasoning blend of your choice (I like Cowboy Butter. Lemon pepper is also good. Be sure salt is among the ingredients.)
About 2/3 cup cornstarch
Cooking oil

Directions:
■ Preheat convection oven or air fryer to 400 (or the highest temperature your air fryer will reach).
■ Pull skin from chicken legs. (I found the easiest way to do this was to begin peeling the skin back starting at the meaty end of the leg. I used a paper towel to help me grip the skin and pull it down the leg and off completely from the bony end.)
■ Place legs in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle generously with seasoning blend. (If your seasoning blend does not contain salt, you will also want to salt the legs at this time.)
■ Toss and rub legs to distribute seasonings evenly.
■ Place about 1/2 cup of cornstarch on a plate or in a cereal bowl. Dredge the legs through the cornstarch, adding more cornstarch to the bowl as needed to lightly dust all the legs.
■ Place legs on a greased and lined baking sheet or in an air fryer basket. Spray liberally with cooking oil, turning legs as needed to cover well.
■ Bake or air fry for about an hour.
■ Check the chicken after about 40 minutes, as devices vary and air fryers do tend to cook faster than convection ovens. The outside should be golden brown and the inside should be fall-apart tender. Chicken is safe to eat when the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.