This recipe for Sweet and Spicy Baked Sriracha Chicken Thighs is one that I worked on with my niece Kara, and it took us a few tries to get just the right combination of ingredients to make the sweet-spicy glaze to brush on the chicken. Along the way we discovered that (in case you're watching your sugar intake) it doesn't really take much sauce brushed on chicken to add amazing flavor, and the sauce sticks to the chicken much better if you simmer it to thicken and concentrate the flavor while the chicken does a quick 20 minutes in the oven.
I also got pretty good at using my kitchen shears to trim the bone-in chicken thighs and cut away the pocket of fat that thighs have on the underneath side; highly recommend that method. I'm pretty sure that pocket of fat is why the South Beach Diet has advised against using thighs, but I think if you carefully trim the fat away, thighs are still be a healthy choice, and they stay much more moist than breasts do in a recipe for baked chicken.
And chicken thighs can be such a bargain! My local store had them on sale for $.88 a pound when I was experimenting with this recipe. Of course, quite a bit of skin and trimmings were discarded (but I don't really mind because I freeze those chicken scraps and use them for homemade chicken stock.) Kara and I were both surprised when her can-be-picky 11 year old son Cooper gobbled up the leftovers from one of the times we tested these, and if you're looking for an easy, inexpensive, and delicious dinner this chicken might be a hit at your house as well.
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