Caramelized Baked Chicken Legs
Recipe adapted from Food.com
Printable Recipe
Serves 6 as a main dish
2 1/2 pounds chicken legs
3/4 cup honey
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lay the chicken legs out and give them a good sprinkling of salt and pepper on both sides. Put them in a foil-lined baking dish with high sides (the foil is to make clean up easier and is not essential). In a glass measuring cup measure out the honey, soy sauce, and ketchup. Add the minced garlic and stir. If the mixture doesn’t combine well microwave it on high for thirty seconds and stir again. Pour the honey mixture over the chicken legs.
Put the chicken legs in the oven and bake for 45 minutes. Take the chicken out of the oven and rotate it so that the bottom that was in the sauce is now on the top out of the sauce. Put the legs back in the oven. Raise the heat to 425 degrees and bake until the sauce is bubbly and starts to caramelize on the chicken legs. This should take about 15 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Notes: Don’t forget the napkins because this is a finger lickin’ kind of meal.
Thanks for stopping in,
Yummm these look delicious!! And they are crispy right? Our favorite wing place was just ruined because we went there and the wings were slimy… But this could very well replace it!
I would tell you no on the crispy… sticky and delicious yes, but not really crispy. I think you could pull them out of the sauce and bake them at the high temperature and get them crispy though! Let me know if you try them :)
ketchup and soy sauce are whole foods?! ;)
You don’t buy organic ketchup too??
Hi Melissa, I mad this for lunch today, and at first I was not likeing too much the sell of garlic and soy sause. Once it started cooking in about 30 minutes in to it, it started smelling a little better :) but I was still not too sure about garlic and soy sauce. After I took a bite of the chicken I thought it was verry tastefully and verry good. Thank you for sharing ur recipes.
I’m so glad it turned out well. I’m a bit of a garlic nut so I’m glad it was ok for you too! Enjoy and thank you for commenting. I love feedback!
I absolutely love this dish! The first time my wife made this I walked into the kitchen and proclaimed how yummy it smelled. She then read to me the ingredients and I was a skeptic: ketchup, soy sauce, honey?
Well, I have to say this has become a staple weeknight dish and the leftovers are even tastier for lunch the next day. This chicken comes out with a sweet, garlicky, ooey-gooey, deliciousness that is just amazing.
Going to try these for dinner tonight, have two kids visiting who are VERY FUSSY eaters. Will let you know if it passes the fussy kids eaters test!
My kids LOVE chicken meat on the bone much more than a breast… which isn’t quiet what the average American likes! Hope it goes well :)
I just made this and it was deelicious! I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs and did everything else as directed. I think it may be my go to baked chicken recipe from now on. Thanks for sharing!!
Good to know you loved it! I make it a few times a month because I always seem to have everything on hand :)
Exactly :o) The ingredients are so simple yet very flavorful when combined!
we do something almost identical except we add a little dried ginger to the sauce. My kids call it “Sticky Chicken” and are thrilled when it on our dinner menus!
So do you cook it in like a 9 x 13 pyrex or something like that? Like a cake-pan kind of thing? Not a cookie sheet, right?
Yep… I think mine is a little smaller than 9×13 but you for sure want sides on the pan bigger than a cookie sheet!
I will have to try this!!! It looks really good!!! Can we do this on the grill too?
Half the delight is cooking it in a bunch of liquid that starts to caramelize… I would cook it in a pan on the grill so that the chicken is still swimming the sauce while it’s cooking. Does that make sense? I think grilling the chicken and just brushing on the sauce might not work the same, but it’s totally worth a try in my book! Let me know how it turns out.
OMG. This was sooo easy and sooooo delicious!!! Thankyou!!!!
Flavor was awesome. But it didn’t thicken up the way I thought it should, even after jacking the temp up. Didn’t quite carmelize except at the edges of the pan.
You could try using a bigger pan next time so that less of the chicken is under the sauce… the part that is sticking out in the end is what really gets wonderfully caramelized… I hope you try it again!
I made this tonight and I also thought it didn’t thicken as much as I wanted – next time for sure I will pour some of the sauce out at the very end when I crank up the heat. It was still yummy though!