Roast Chicken Thighs

Warning: This recipe will probably get your oven dirty and possibly set your smoke alarm off. At least that's what happened to me! There was a lot of excess oil from the marinade that I left on the chicken once I transferred it to the roasting pan. I thought it would add flavor and perhaps make a nice pan sauce but it caused a lot of splatter in the oven and poured smoke out of the oven when I opened the door! So I would suggest you shake off as much marinade as you can before cooking these babies.

Oil, oil everywhere! I should have taken a picture of my oven!

Otherwise, it was delicious! Nice, crispy skin that adds a lot of flavor to the meat even if you discard it. And the lemon, oil, honey, and mustard all combine nicely. So much so that I suggested using our leftovers to make some quesadillas later in the week and Chuck was appalled that I would do that! He said the chicken was too good to waste on something like a quesadilla where the flavor would really be masked.

I found this in a magazine but there was really no recipe so I will link you to the magazine's web page. Additionally, the recipe did not state the temperature at which to roast these so I took a stab at 425 degrees and it worked out well. I also halved the recipe but wrote the original for you below. Enjoy!

Roast Chicken Thighs

from Everyday Food, March 2010 edition

Makes 8 servings

8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

1/2 cup olive oil

juice of one lemon (about 3 tablespoons)

kosher salt and coarse ground black pepper

1 tablespoon grainy mustard

1-2 tablespoons honey

Toss the chicken thighs with olive oil and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Marinate in the refrigerator for at least one hour and up to one day. (I like to put everything into a Ziploc bag for easy clean-up.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Oil a roasting pan big enough to give each piece of chicken it's own space. Transfer the chicken thighs to the roasting pan, skin side down, shaking off excess marinade. Roast 20-25 minutes; flip and roast another 10 minutes.

Stir together mustard, honey, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove chicken from oven and turn oven to broil. Brush the mustard mixture onto each thigh and return to broiler for 4-5 minutes. Watch for burning and serve immediately.

Just ignore the gourmet stuffing served alongside ;)