Spicy Honey-Brushed Chicken Legs

I was in the mood for some chicken drumsticks so I looked through my CL recipes to find one that would satisfy my craving. I found the Spicy Honey Brushed Chicken thigh recipe. Instead of using thighs I used a package of six drumsticks. Here is the recipe below.

Ingredients
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika (i used smoked paprika)
1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
8 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
Cooking spray
6 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons cider vinegar

Preparation
Preheat broiler.

Combine first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Add chicken to bowl; toss to coat. Place chicken on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Broil chicken 5 minutes on each side.

Combine honey and vinegar in a small bowl, stirring well. Remove chicken from oven; brush 1/4 cup honey mixture on chicken. Broil 1 minute. Remove chicken from oven and turn over. Brush chicken with remaining honey mixture. Broil 1 additional minute or until chicken is done.



The drumsticks were pretty thick so they actually took longer to cook. Since I was also making sweet potato fries in the oven, I didn't want to use the broiler setting so I set both the sweet potato fries and the chicken legs on bake setting at 425 degrees. After about ten minutes in the oven, I noticed that the chicken legs were taking a long time to cook so I actually ended up cooking the chicken legs in a skillet. It still tasted great and I had more control of finishing the cooking of the chicken at the exact time they were cooked through so the chicken was super tender. If you do cook this on a skillet, make sure that you first sear the top and bottom of the chicken leg to seal in the flavor, then put a lid on top of the skillet so that you are essentially cooking and steaming the chicken so it cooks faster and doesn't burn as easily.

Sweet potato fries made an excellent side for this dish, and sweet potato fries are one of my favorites sides. (You can't go wrong with sweet potato fries) Plus these fries are baked not fried so you can feel less guilty about eating them!

Sweet Potato Fries

Take three large sweet potatoes (this is enough for 3 people) and microwave them for about 5 minutes. Then chop sweet potatoes into long wedges (so that they look like fries) In a large and deep bowl, put 2-3 TBSP of olive oil, and a couple shakes of salt and freshly ground pepper. Throw in the sweet potatoes and toss in the oil mixture. Then spread out on a greased cooking sheet and bake at 350-400 for 30-40 minutes. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes and flip the fries over to the other side and bake for another 15-20 minutes.