It's A Honey Of A Recipe

This week is in the "what were we thinking" category. Nothing bad going on, but too many things scheduled on top of each other while we are also trying to get Mommy and the girls ready to head home. So there isn't much cooking going on here this week. BUT I did cook lots last week. This is a supper we especially enjoyed.

Sometimes supper plans change. We thought we were going to have BLTs for supper but the tomatoes weren't ripe enough. Thankfully, I had just bought chicken legs that afternoon for later in the week. When I want easy chicken legs, I usually just pour bottled BBQ sauce over them and stick them in the oven for an hour. But I happened to see this recipe online just in time. It had so many five star reviews, I figured it had to be good. And I had all the ingredients on hand.

I tweaked the recipe a little, and wrote the directions the way I did it. We liked this very much. I think next time I would cook mine a little longer to let them get a little browner. The very brown parts tasted the best! We could taste the honey, but it was not overpowering. We wished we had put individual wet wipes at each place. It's not super messy, but we did have sticky fingers!

CARAMALIZED HONEY BAKED CHICKEN LEGS

2-1/2 lbs. chicken legs (I used two pkgs--10 legs)

3/4 cup honey

1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons ketchup

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 rounded teaspoon jarred minced garlic 

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a 9x13 pan with foil for easy clean up. Mix together honey, soy sauce, ketchup, garlic, oil, salt and pepper, blending thoroughly. Put chicken legs in pan. Pour sauce over chicken.

Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour to 1/1/2 hours, until caramalized, turning chicken pieces a couple of times during baking. Spoon sauce over legs a couple of times during the last 15 minutes. 

Be sure to bake until the skin on the legs begins to get some dark brown color (not burned, though!) on the skin--when it has "caramalized." That's where the yummy flavor comes from!

Did you notice the marinated vegetables served on the side? That's Carol's recipe from last week. It was nice to have that salad in the refrigerator ready to go as a side dish.