Month-of-One-Pan Meals: Honey Garlic Chicken

Welcome to my annual Month-of Recipes on this blog. Go rummaging in the attic here and you’ll find past recipe months for appetizers, chicken, soup, mini-desserts, and more. The way it works is, for each day in February I post a recipe that fits the category. This month is one-pan meals, excluding pizza, most casseroles, and slow cooker recipes.

Honey and garlic? How could that NOT be delicious, right? I have never been told that I need to add more garlic to a dish. Ha! In my world, more is always better with garlic! However, I pared this recipe down for some of your more timid palates, but, if you’re like me, use a large clove of garlic.

This is another chicken dish I make that has a bit of sweetness. This is a flavor profile I never used to make, but we’ve become rather fond of how it changes the meal. This is one of my very favorite ways to eat chicken. DH, too! Is it my favorite favorite? Well, like your children, you really can’t pick just one, now can you?

Honey Garlic Chicken (serves 2)

2 chicken thighs

2 teaspoons oil

1 small clove garlic, minced

½ teaspoon ginger, minced

4 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons soy sauce

Large handful of baby carrots

8 large brussels sprouts, cut in half

Whole potato (halved after baking)

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with cast iron skillet inside. Let skillet sit in hot oven for ten minutes, then remove to add chicken. Add oil and swirl around.

While skillet is heating, pat chicken dry. Add chicken to skillet, skin side down, when removed from oven. Let sit for five minutes then turn skin side up and return to oven with the potato alongside.

Bake chicken and potato for 20 minutes.

While chicken is baking, combine garlic, ginger, honey, and soy sauce in a small bowl. Stir thoroughly and set aside.

After 20 minutes, remove chicken from the oven. Remove potato and put on a plate. Pour sauce into skillet, stirring around to coat all sides of the chicken. Move chicken to the center and add vegetables, coating chicken, carrots and brussels sprouts with the sauce. Put potato beside chicken. Sprinkle sea salt and pepper on all.

Bake for another 25 minutes or until chicken reads 165 degrees on your meat thermometer and potato is baked. Spoon sauce over chicken. Stir carrots and brussels sprouts around to coat with sauce again.  

Remove potato and halve on plates. Serve with chicken and other vegetables.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up

“I think this is the best chicken yet. And I like having a potato with it.” I think with my oyster sauce chicken and cocoa chile chicken, I’ve gotten him used to chicken with a bit of sweetness. He does have a big sweet tooth!

A Month-of-Chicken: Rule-of-Four Sweet Garlic Chicken

Big Mama arrived for her five years, er, five weeks visit. So, sweets for the sweet, I say. Although the Internet is rife with variations of this recipe, I first heard of it from Chicago and his girlfriend, Caldwell.

Chicago loves to cook (That’s my boy!), and Caldwell is interested in learning more so they are a fun couple to get recipes from. I modified (as I always do) what they told me to make it easier to remember--4 ingredients and measurements in four. This recipe is very forgiving about exact measurements so it is perfect for a measurement-aversion cook like me.

You have to be in my garlic-lovers camp to appreciate this one, but though it may seem overdone, keep this in mind: the bigger the garlic pieces the milder the taste. So while half the garlic in this recipe is minced (therefore sharper and garlicker), the other half is big, thick slices, thus milder to the taste.

Here’s my version of their

Take Four Sweet Garlic Chicken (serves 4)

4 t olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

4 cloves garlic, big slices

4 T brown sugar

4 chicken thighs--I use skin-on, bone-in, but use what you want

Sauté minced garlic in olive oil. Add garlic slices and cook 1 minute. Add brown sugar to all and stir. Remove from heat and let cool. Spread paste all over top, bottom, and sides of chicken thighs. Place in Pammed baking dish, skin side up, and bake for 2 hours at 250º.

I like to serve this with a fruit salad as a counterpunch to the garlic and dribble the pan drippings on either rice or noodles. You could remove the chicken from the pan and quickly dump the rice or noodles into the pan and stir around to coat your carb. That’s tasty, too!

DH’s Rating: 4 Tongues Up. This had more garlic than he liked. (Wimp!) He also said it reminded him of a less spicy version of my five TU Cocoa Chili Chicken (recipe this month). True dat! Still, four TUs aint’ bad! Big Mama liked it a lot, but she’s still getting the hang of the TU rating system.