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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
Flavourful and delightfully sticky, this easy-to-make honey garlic chicken may just become a family favourite. Serve with rice or potatoes for your next dinner.
If you’d like to be able to leave something cooking all day, try making some honey garlic Slow Cooker Chicken Thighs instead. Or for a different cut of chicken, try these Japanese Chicken Wings. Serve them with your favourite side dish and some veggies for a full meal.
Reader Review
And another hit from Karlynn! Executed in our kitchen with a precise exactness of 5! ))) ingredients!
Excellent recipe, easy to prep and cook! Sauce – out of this world! Big hello to Mother-in-law! It was a huge favorite at tonight’s dinner – served with white rice and tossed salad!
Thanks for a wonderful recipe! Taras.
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: This is an easy recipe.
- Total Time: This chicken will take approximately 50 minutes to cook.
- Variations: The sauce in this recipe is super simple, so feel free to adjust the exact amount of seasonings to your own personal tastes. Use more or less ginger depending on your preference, play with the amount of garlic powder or use a ginger-garlic paste instead. If you’d like to add some heat to this recipe, sprinkle in a pinch of hot pepper flakes or a dash of your favourite hot sauce.
- Tools Needed: For this recipe, you’ll need an oven safe skillet or a large frying pan and a baking dish large enough for the chicken, a large bowl, a whisk, a meat thermometer, and some tongs.
What You’ll Need For Ingredients
Chicken: This recipe calls for bone-in chicken thighs, and the times and temperatures revolve around that. However, you could use this recipe for a different cut of chicken as long as you’re prepared to adjust cooking times accordingly. Boneless chicken thighs or breasts, for example, would be perfect. Definitely keep the skin on if you can.
Sauce: The sauce portion of this recipe is incredibly simple. You can modify the exact amounts of the ingredients to suit your personal preference, and double up on the amounts if you’d like more sauce for your meal. If you happen to have some garlic-ginger paste, this is a great recipe to use some in.
How to Make Easy Honey Garlic Chicken
This is a brief overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Whisk together all of the sauce ingredients in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken as well. Reserve some of the sauce for later.
- Place chicken into the sauce and cover. Marinate.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- Preheat the skillet with olive oil in it.
- Fry the chicken until the skin starts to crisp up.
- Pour the remaining sauce on top of the chicken.
- Place the skillet into the oven and bake until the thighs reach an internal temperature of 185°F.
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for Making Honey Garlic Chicken
Recommended Sides: This chicken will go beautifully with rice or noodles or potatoes. Whatever you like, really. Try doubling the sauce recipe so that you have plenty extra to pour over rice. Make a simple Mushroom Rice or some The BEST Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes! and Sautéed Green Beans to serve with this chicken. If you prefer noodles, try serving this chicken with thick, yakisoba style noodles. You could also serve it with some buttery pasta or a big bowl of salad.
Temperatures: While a temperature of 165°F is safe for chicken thighs, cooking them to 185°F helps them to become even more tender and juicy. If you are using chicken breasts, don’t cook pasts that 165°F or the meat will dry out. Boneless chicken thighs are more forgiving than breasts, as they tend to have more moisture, but you may not need to cook all the way to 185°F.
Storage Instructions
Fridge: Once this chicken is fully cooled, you can store it in a sealed container in the fridge for 2-3 days. Reheat in the microwave or oven.
Freezer: To avoid this chicken freezing into one solid chunk, spread out the individual pieces on a tray or plate with parchment paper. Put them in the freezer for long enough to harden them. Once the pieces are frozen solid, put them all into a freezer safe bag or container. Store them this way for up to 3 months.
More Delicious Chicken Recipes
Looking for more tasty ways to make chicken?
Try these Crispy Oven Baked Chicken Thighs made with Homemade Shake and Bake Mix.
This creamy Chicken Florentine works beautifully with potatoes or bread.
Serve this Sweet Honey Curry Chicken with rice.
There you go, everyone. Easy and delicious honey garlic chicken that you can make in under an hour! Try out this recipe and let me know what you think.
Happy Cooking!
Karlynn
Mom’s Easy Honey Garlic Chicken
Video
Ingredients
- 6-8 chicken thighs or breasts, skin on
- ½ cup soy sauce, make it low sodium if salt bothers you
- 1 cup liquid honey
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- ½ teaspoon ginger
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
- Whisk together all of the sauce ingredients in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken as well. Reserve about a 1/2 cup of the sauce for later.
- Place chicken into the sauce and cover. Marinate for an hour or two if possible, turning if you get the chance.
- Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- Pre-heat an oven safe skillet with olive oil in it.
- Fry the chicken until the skin started to crisp up ( this helps the skin not get too soggy in the oven)
- Pour the remaining sauce on top of the chicken.
- Place the skillet into the oven and bake until the thighs reach an internal temperature of 185 degrees F. You can occasionally baste the chicken with sauce while cooking if wanted.
- Serve with rice, potatoes etc. It’s exceptional with rice!
Notes
Tips & Tricks
- You can use chicken thighs or chicken breasts and I highly recommend using skin on for the best honey garlic chicken. The skin becomes crispy, sticky and utterly delicious when cooked!
- Cook the chicken thighs to 185 °F for the best texture. While you can cook it to 165 °F for safety sake, you actually want to cook thigh meat to a higher temperature to break down the meat better. It is tough meat at 165 ° and like butter when you reach 185 °F. This is a trick I learned from some chef friends and it will make you a chicken thigh addict!
- Cook the chicken breast to 165 °F and no more.
- The sauce is beyond amazing, make sure to reserve some sauce before you marinade the chicken, I like to use fresh sauce later on and not the marinade.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Carole D. says
I never add the marinade that the chicken or meat that I use as marinade. There could be bacteria that formed.
Karlynn J says
Yes, that’s why you reserve half a cup of the marinade and set it aside. that’s in step one.
Judie says
I can’t wait to try this. What sides would go with it?
Bruce Janis says
Hi Karlynn…Ling time follower of your recipes and cookbooks. But, I have a question for you. My wife has been diagnosed as “pre-diabetic” and to keep her healthy, I have been adjusting some of your recipes to follow guidelines set by her dietitian.
Just as a suggestion, you might want to consider adding a recipe or two for diabetics, and I would bet that publishing a complete cookbook would sell well. While there are plenty of diabetic cookbooks out there, they seem to be simply compilations of recipes from other books, many of which remind me of eating C-rations in my younger days. Anyway, thanks for all your insightful recipes and I wish you well…Bruce J
Rich Lee says
Tried to get your recipe but found it too complicated for me….
Not everyone is 21 any more.
MARY says
PINNED ALL THREE. LOVE MAKE AHEAD MEALS. HEAT AND EAT. I HAVE MORE ENERGY EARLY IN THE DAY.
Diane says
Made this for my husband and me tonight and thought it was delicious!!!!!
Darlene says
Do I need to put a lid over the skillet when I put it into the oven to bake?
Also, what do you do to prevent the chicken from burning when you are frying the chicken to crisp it up before putting it in the oven?
Jeannette says
How do you keep chicken from burning when you fry it at the beginning of the recipec
Lori says
Super easy and delicious! Thank you!
Sue says
Delicious!
Karlynn says
Glad you liked it!
Taras Serednytsky says
And another hit from Karlynn! Executed in our kitchen with a precise exactness of 5! ))) ingredients!
Excellent recipe, easy to prep and cook! Sauce – out of this world! Big hello to Mother-in-law! It was a huge favorite at tonight’s dinner – served with white rice and tossed salad!
Thanks for a wonderful recipe! Taras.
Karlynn says
Awesome! I am so glad to hear it! Thanks for letting me know!
Leslie says
This sauce it terrific. I always trust your recipes. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Karlynn says
Awww I am so glad you liked it!
Jacob says
Made this for my family tonight. Big hit! I used a dry measuring cup for the honey, but it’s really just to get it close. I wouldn’t worry too much about being exact with marinades.
Madeleine says
Made this for my family last night and they gobbled it up!! It’s definitrly a favourite for us! Just wondering, do you measure the honey with a liquid or dry measuring cup ?
Rita says
A great recipe – my husband could even cookthi wonderful, but easy. As he is my carer this would be a lovely meal. Thanking You!!!!