Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Hot and Sweet Drumsticks...and so much more!!

I loved this recipe! At first I thought it was going to be really similar to the Russian Chicken I make, but it was even better. I'm not the most creative person. Only a few years ago I could honestly say I didn't have a creative bone in me, but after years of attempting many different projects I have gotten a little more creative. When it comes to cooking it's kind of the same story. I've tried so many different recipes over the past 6 years I've gotten better about substituting, changing, or combining recipes to fit my family's taste buds. Ok..so to make a long story short even though I loved this recipe, I started thinking of all the different ways I could use this sauce, but the one that stands out the most is stir fry. I think this would be amazing as a stir fry. Red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, sugar snap peas..mmm, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Anyway, either way you decide to do it, the only suggestion I give is be careful to not over cook the chicken (although if you were to use this as a stir fry I would just cut the chicken into bite size pieces and cook it in a skillet pouring the sauce over after at the end) The original recipe was for drumsticks with the skin still on, but I'm just not a fan so I used chicken breasts which don't take as long to cook and was a little dry. Anyway this is super easy and quick recipe and you should have most of the ingredients on hand so don't wait to make this one!! Don't shy away because of the use of hot in the title because it totally isn't, I may have cut back on the hot sauce just a little and it wasn't hot at all.


1 cup Apricot Preserves
½ cups Ketchup
¼ cups Soy Sauce
2 teaspoons Minced Garlic
2 teaspoons Hot Pepper Sauce
3 pounds Drumsticks (about 12)

In a small sauce pan heat the first 4 ingredients until the preserves are completely melted stirring to combine. Now this is the only part I would change, the recipe said to cook uncovered, but I think since I used only 2 chicken breasts, cut in half, it would have been better if I had covered it. If cooking the full 3 lbs cook in a 9x13 pan, if you cut the recipe in half like me use an 8x8 pan and cook at 350 for 25-30 minutes otherwise cook closer to 45 minutes.

This recipe came from the Tasty Kitchen over at the Pioneerwoman's blog. If you ever get the chance the Pioneer Woman and the Tasty Kitchen have some seriously good recipes!

UPDATE: ok so I tried this again, and again used chicken breast and decided that it get's way tough..so I'm going to assume that drumsticks really are the way to go..but I'm still going to try it as a stir fry.. I'll let you know how it turns out.