ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Crispy Baked Chicken Thighs with Creamy Two-Booze Date-Mustard Sauce (Patreon)

We haven’t gone shopping in awhile and are now afraid to due to crazy people guzzling toilet paper. So I just threw my hands in the air and started throwing things in a pan for lunch because I couldn’t take another frozen Trader Joe’s Fakeaway Special and hot damn what came out was so good it immediately got promoted to Patreon recipe.

I made it again the next night, too.

It’s kind of French-ish, and I’ll note here that I like my chicken thighs slightly overdone so slap five to seven minutes off it if you don’t. I just love everything sizzling and the skin merging spiritually with the bone. I put it on a thick slab of crusty bread, but it would be amazing with potatoes or rice as well. Really any carb of your choice.

I don’t even have much to say about this! It’s just easy and delicious and sweet-savory and it takes about an hour and change. The sauce is a basic roux with cream and mustard…and the dates.

So I used Israeli date-honey, which was a gift and I understand many of you will not have. Instructions are included for actual dates. If you don’t have dates, I think cranberries/cranberry jam would be a nice subsitute, and make it a bit Thanksgivings-y. Additionally, I didn’t have fresh thyme, but if you do, you should use that shit because it is just holistically better. A couple of handfuls of bitter greens wilted in the sauce would go over amazeballs. 

Obviously, this is a fairly basic recipe and you could put a lot of other things in that sauce and change it up. I WILL NOT JUDGE YOU. And hey! Do it with turkey parts too and call it Thanksgiving for one! AGAIN I WILL BE HAPPY FOR YOU.

Ingredients

4-5 Chicken thighs or legs, bone in, skin on

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup dijon mustard

1 tablespoon date honey OR three whole dates

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 cup hoppy beer, IPA is fine, no stouts or porters though. Keep it pale!

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/8 cup orange juice

2 tablespoons flour (may need more or less depending on the thickness of your roux)

1 teaspoon dried thyme or 4-5 sprigs fresh

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1/4 cup heavy cream

Salt and pepper to taste

LET’S DO THIS

Pre-heat oven to 400F.

Get a cast iron pan or other stove-to-oven safe pan.

Pat chicken parts dry with paper towels, season both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in pan on medium-high til hot.

Fry chicken skin side down in oil until skin turns golden brown, about 6 minutes or so. Turn pieces over and turn off heat, let cook for 2-3 minutes.

Put pan in the oven for 50 minutes-1 hour.

Remove chicken to plate. You’ll want to pour off some of the fat as it’s intense at this point. Remove about 3 or four tablespoons, but leave all the baked chickeny bits and such in the pan. Deglaze with white wine. Add juice, beer stock, thyme and dates (if using whole dates just leave them in there whole the entire time) or date honey, and reduce for about two to three minutes on medium high, until volume has lowered by about half. Lower heat to simmer. Sift flour into pan and scrape on all sides, cooking at low temp to form a roux. I like to put a lot of black pepper in at this point.

When roux has thickened, add mustard and cook for 2 minutes more. Then add cream slowly, and finally let it simmer for about a minute before turning off the heat. Add vinegar, stir, and let stand for five or ten minutes to set and thicken. Remove dates and fresh thyme, if using pour over chicken and carb of your choice and enjoy autumn despite the entire civilized world having taken a time-out.