Sticky Lemon Chicken

So sticky, so lemony, so moist and packed with so much flavor. Sticky Lemon Chicken is a super easy weeknight meal made in minutes!

The most flavorful chicken dish I have ever made is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s cookbook, Fast Food. The aromas of chicken thighs caramelized in soy sauce, honey and garlic, along with zesty lemon are intoxicating and one of our favorite ways to prepare and eat chicken.

I tweaked Gordon’s recipe slightly by using chicken thighs in place for the whole chicken, searing it in butter for more flavor and replacing  sherry vinegar with some good old balsamic vinegar.

This recipe for sticky lemon chicken is so easy and doesn’t require multiple trips to the grocery store. Unless you are like me – going for lemons and soy sauce and coming back with peanut butter, milk, chocolate chips, bananas, eggs, and spinach; then putting all the groceries away thinking how great it is to have all this yummy food in my house, and dreaming of what I will be making with the chocolate chips, and imagining the potential smoothie recipes, and… “OMG, I did not get the lemons and the soy sauce!”

The ingredient list for sticky lemon chicken has a few items, but the ones you need to pay attention to are lemons, soy sauce and thyme because chances are you already have chicken, butter, garlic, salt, honey and balsamic vinegar. You well-stocked pantry person, you.

A simple ingredient list and just a few minutes of your time will make you say “cheekan… good!”. Did you catch The Fifth Element reference?

Ingredients:

8 chicken thighs

few thyme sprigs, or 1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/2 lemon, sliced

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp soy sauce

whole garlic bulb, cut in half

salt and freshly ground back pepper to taste

1/2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

a splash of balsamic vinegar (or red wine/sherry vinegar)

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

Heat the skillet with butter and oil on high heat and brown the chicken on both sides, about 3-4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, reduce heat to medium and add the garlic bulb with thyme sprigs.

Add balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, water and cook down until reduced by half, about 6-7 minutes. Add lemon slices to the pan, drizzle the chicken pieces with honey and stir to combine, turning chicken frequently to coat in the sauce.

Finish with chopped parsley and serve.

Mine went incredibly delicious with a bowl of mashed potatoes on the side. Make this sticky lemon chicken dinner on a weeknight and let it be friends with you for lunch all week long!