Feel Like Chicken Tonight?

By Caroline Clough in Food on May 1, 2006 5:39PM

Chicagoist had a hankering for chicken last week, and we thought long and hard about the exact nature of this hankering before we went out and bought the ingredients for the meal you see before you. The weather is getting better, but the day we were rearin' to cook was not an outdoors barbeque kind of day, so we made do with our broiler. If you're jonesing for barbequed chicken and this rainy day crap is getting you down, you may want to try this out.

Chicagoist admits that we're not all that familiar with making barbeque sauce from scratch so we will not, by any means, suggest that this is the best sauce ever made. In fact, we openly admit that it's not. But it's not so bad, or as the three guinea humans we used as tasters said, it's pretty good.

What You Need:


4 chicken legs (with skin)
3 chicken breasts (we used skinless boneless, but ideally you would want boneless with skin)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika
3/4 teaspoon rubbed sage
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
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1/2 white onion, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, minced/crushed
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 can whole, peeled tomatoes, pureed in a blender
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
Pepper

What You Do:
In a large bowl, large enough for all your chicken to sit comfortably, mix together 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, 1 tablespoon sesame oil and 1 tablespoon honey along with the chili powder, paprika, sage, mustard, ginger and salt and pepper to taste. This should result in a slightly liquidy paste. Put all your chicken into the bowl, making sure it's consistently covered in the paste. Get the paste under the skin as well. Cover, and let sit for at least two hours.

Next comes the sauce. We made the sauce while the chicken was hanging out in the refrigerator. This recipe makes far more sauce than you'll need for the chicken ... about three cups, but then you'll have it on hand for any other barbeque-like project you may have in your future.

In a medium sauce pan heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil until it's hot but not sizzling. Put the chopped onion in, and let it cook until it turns a bit brown, this takes about five minutes. Then add the garlic and red pepper; wait until you get that really great garlicky smell then add the tomato paste. Stir for another minute; then add the tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, honey and molasses. Let all of this cook over low heat for about thirty minutes. The color of the sauce should become a slightly deeper shade of red, and the sauce should thicken up a fair amount.

Now to put it all together. Preheat your oven to broil. Cover a baking sheet or broiling pan with aluminum foil. Place the chicken (skin side down) on the sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover each piece of chicken with the sauce, about three tablespoon per piece (but you can eyeball this easily enough), and broil for ten minutes. Take the chicken out of the oven, and flip them to the other side; then put more sauce on that side. Cook for another fifteen minutes, and check again. If you have a meat thermometer you can know, for sure, that you're free of fearing salmonella when the internal temperature of the meat is 165-170 degrees. The breasts, which we cut up into bite-sized pieced, cook much faster than the legs. We had to give the legs an additional 5-10 minutes.

Then, all that's left - other than a messy kitchen to clean up - is eating. This will serve four adults comfortably. As a side dish we used a variety of our favorite salad, taking out the sumac and adding about three tablespoons chopped parsley and one can of chickpeas.