MARINATED CHICKEN THIGHS

A great Marinade using Asian flavors

This recipe for marinated chicken thighs is delicious. The Asian flavor profile of soy sauce, ginger and sesame seed oil is one that we use in many recipes. CHICKEN PINEAPPLE STIR FRY, BEEF AND VEGETABLE STIR FRY, CHICKEN STIR FRY are some. In this recipe we have used these ingredients to make a marinade and paired it with chicken thighs. When the thighs are cooked they are moist, tender and flavorful.

It’s not just for chicken thighs

This marinade is not only great for marinating chicken thighs. It is just as good for marinating chicken breast, pork, steak tips, or even vegetables. And yes, wings too. You don’t need to wait for seasonal grilling. Anything you make with this marinade can be baked in the oven and still come out tender and juicy.

No matter what you are using this marinade for let it soak for at least an hour before cooking. You can marinate as long as overnight if that’s what is convenient for you. There’s always a deeper flavor when your food has been marinated overnight. Most marinades tenderize meat also.

Don’t waste your time or money on store bought

Are they really all that convenient?

We have been conditioned to think that “convenience foods” are saving us lots of time because the ingredients are already put together. It only takes 2 or 3 minutes to mix up a marinade. And you will find the ingredients to many marinades already in your kitchen. Looking at it that way, you take longer trying to decide which bottle of marinade to buy that it takes to make one.

This marinade goes together in a couple of minutes. There’s no chopping or precooking. Just combine a few ingredients together in a bowl, cup or bottle and stir or shake.

There are endless recipes out there for marinades and some call for only 2 or 3 ingredients. You can use your own favorite spices, herbs, juices and aromatics. It’s all about flavor and tenderness.

And what about the cost?

Bottled marinades are expensive. For pennies on the dollar you can make the same marinade yourself.

Just about everything premade is going to cost you more than making it yourself. Bottled marinade is a great example of that. Buying one bottle of marinade makes one dinner. You may even need to buy 2 bottles depending on how much food you are making.

By investing the same amount of money in ingredients, you can make your marinade and then use the ingredients time and time again in limitless ways.

A tip about using labels to make it at home

Not sure how to get the taste of your favorite bottled marinade at home?

Look at the label. Read past the junk ingredients that you have never heard of and look for those ingredients you know. Read all the way to the bottom because spices and herbs will be listed there. They are important components to flavor.

Are you familiar with the way a label lists the ingredients in a product? The most used ingredient is the first one on the list and it works down to the least used. So if the label lists water first, that means the product has more water than anything else. That is why you will find the herbs and spices at the end.

You will be able to identify the “real” food ingredients, but just because you know what an ingredient is, that doesn’t mean you need to use it in your marinade. Look for a flavor profile, not a recipe. You might be amazed at the things that are in that bottle if you are not used to reading labels. Corn syrup is a common filler ingredient. It’s added to make a product sweeter so you will want more. You don’t need to use filler ingredients such as corn syrup.

And the best reason of all

A big advantage to making something yourself is that you know what’s in it.

We are all getting a lot of unnecessary chemicals and junk filler ingredients when we use packaged “convenience foods”. Let’s face it, they simply cannot be good for anyone if they are consumed regularly. I don’t need to be a nutritionist to know that and neither do you. Everyone knows it, but lots of people don’t believe they can limit them in any meaningful way. You can start by making small changes. Going from bottled marinades and making them yourself could be one of those small changes.

Making a marinade yourself means you can have it your way. You can use flavors you like. Marinades start with an oil, something acidic is added like vinegar or lemon and then the flavors of your liking are added such as garlic, onion, herbs and or spices, maybe a touch tomato paste or hot sauce. If you are using flavors you like you can’t go wrong!

The theory of supply and demand in action

Chicken thighs are usually pretty reasonably priced, and for the most part they have always been a “cheaper” part of the bird. Thighs are the upper part of a chicken’s leg and considered to be “dark meat”. They are more tender and moist than breast meat and great when marinated before grilling or baking.

Chicken wings are the part of the chicken that most of us associate with marinating. Chicken wings are ridiculously expensive. The price of chicken wings has skyrocketed since I started shopping for food.

Before the soaring popularity of buffalo wings, grocery stores and meat markets did everything but GIVE wings away just to get them out of the store. No kidding. I used to buy a 5 pound bag of fresh chicken wings at a local meat market for 1 dollar. Yes, everything was a lot cheaper in those days but relatively speaking the price of skinless, boneless chicken breasts at that time was more than a T-bone steak of the same weight.

The tables have completely turned.

These days boneless, skinless chicken breasts are often one of the lowest priced meats in the case. But if I want to make chicken wings at home I have to blow half my weekly grocery budget.

Why is that?

Because chickens only have 2 wings. I can’t help but think someone, somewhere is trying to genetically modify chickens to have more wings. But so far it’s one bird, two wings. After harvesting the 2 coveted wings from a chicken there are a lot of parts left over. The wings that butchers had to try to get rid of in the past are now the delicacy and all the breasts and legs left behind have to be priced to sell.

There is no better example of the dynamics of supply and demand in action than this complete flip flop in the cost of chicken breast vs chicken wing.

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

For the marinade

About the ingredients

Sesame oil

Have you ever used sesame seed oil? We have a tidbit post Using Sesame Oil which gives a little bit of information about sesame seed oil if you are not familiar with it. It is oil extracted from sesame seeds. Some sesame seed oil is extracted after the seed has been toasted and it will be labeled toasted sesame seed oil. Toasted seed oil is a lot more intense in flavor. Even within those categories I have found differing intensities. Often the untoasted sesame seed oils in non-specialty grocery stores are pretty mild. In this marinade sesame oil is an important ingredient. It is a complementary flavor to the rest of the ingredients. You can use either toasted or not toasted.

Chicken thighs

A chicken’s thigh is at the top of the leg just like ours. The bottom part of the leg is called the drumstick because of it’s shape after it is cut away from the thigh. In the average grocery store there are usually 3 options when buying chicken legs. You can buy the whole leg, often called a leg quarter because each leg makes up a quarter of the size of the chicken. Or you can buy parts of the leg already cut. Those parts are thighs or drumsticks. They are all the same meat so if you can get a better price on whole legs or that is all you can get, it is an easy job to cut a leg into a thigh and drumstick if you want to.

Cut the fat off before you start marinating or cooking. Chicken legs usually have globs of fat. If you have bought thighs already cut they will typically not have as much fat on them. If you want to get a closer look at trimming the fat from chicken we have a post in our COOKING TIPS section Trimming The Fat.

I have taken a picture of 3 whole legs. One leg is shown from the outside and another is the inside of the leg. I also have one that has been trimmed of fat and cut into a thigh and drumstick, so you can see where to make the cut. You won’t be able to cut through. There is a joint in the area you are cutting, but if you cut all around the joint you can bend it backwards and snap it apart pretty easily. If you look closely you can see the ball of the joint where I snapped it off at the cut.

A look at cutting a whole leg into a thigh and drumstick

This is WHAT TO DO:

Mix the marinade ingredients

Trim the fat

Prepare the thighs by trimming any excess skin and fat from them. You can use kitchen sheers. They work really well for this. We have a post on trimming chicken Trimming The Fat.

Here’s a quick look at trimming

Add the chicken to the marinade

Pour the marinate into a shallow glass baking dish or large wide bottomed glass or pottery bowl. Add the thighs to the marinade and turn to coat them on all sides. Glass, ceramic or pottery is preferred for marinating but if you don’t have any of these, use plastic. You can even put the chicken thighs into a large plastic zip top storage bag and add the marinade to the bag.

You shouldn’t marinate in metal. It can change the flavor of the finished product and the meat can pick up a tang that isn’t appealing.

Your marinated chicken thighs are now ready to cook

You can grill or bake in the oven.

If you are grilling

If you are grilling the marinated chicken thighs you are on your own. 😊 There are way too many variables to give hard and fast guidance. Keep in mind that thighs need to be cooked all the way through, so use a section of the grill that has moderate heat. If cooked over a high flame they can look done on the outside but not be cooked to the bone inside.

Cooking temperature is something to think about no matter what you are cooking on or with. A steady moderate heat will cook something through evenly. A high heat will sear the outside and leave the inside less cooked. So, if you are cooking a steak that you want seared on the outside and less cooked on the inside you want to use high heat (closer to the flame if you are grilling).

If you are baking the marinated chicken thighs in the oven

Bake for 45 minutes on a roasting rack in a preheated oven at 350 degrees.

The chicken thighs in our pictures have been oven baked, so you can see you sacrifice nothing by baking rather than grilling. Use a roasting rack rather than laying the thighs flat on a baking dish or pan so the heat can circulate all the way around the meat. The fat will drip into the pan below just as it does when you grill. If the meat were left to render fat in a flat baking pan the fat would be oven frying the meat, not roasting/baking it.

A roasting rack and pan does not need to be anything fancy. You can use a regular baking rack placed in or over any pan as long as the heat can circulate around the chicken thigh. I am using my grandmother’s roasting pan. There’s a lesson to be learned from this humble roasting pan. Good cooking equipment only gets better with age. It can literally last for generations. The patina that has formed on the pan that makes it black has now made this pan non-stick. It just rinses clean no matter what I cook in it.

Here’s a look at the marinated chicken thighs going in and coming out

Make sure to leave a little room around each of the thighs so they can roast evenly. Don’t cram them against each other.

Serve