Believe it or not, the best way to cook barbecued chicken is in the oven! (or roaster) If you have a roaster, this is a fool-proof recipe for perfect BBQ chicken thighs every time. If you don't have a roaster, you can cook this in the oven covered in tin foil. I highly suggest a roaster to anyone who cooks often or for a lot of people. They're relatively inexpensive, use less electricity than the oven, and won't heat up your house in the summer. Here's mine:
It's a Hamilton Beach 18 QT which is just big enough to hold my 11x15 pan. Nothing to look at but it gets the job done. It gets the job done better than the oven sometimes.
On to the recipe...
There's not much you need in terms of ingredients, the most important part of getting these just right is method. Let's talk first about how to trim the thighs themselves. I have a large family so I buy the big family pack of thighs with the skin on. As you can see here, they come with an excess of skin. If you leave all of this on, it will just turn out mushy or gooey.
First, turn your thigh upside down, then grab that extra flap of skin, pull up and trim. Like so:
Keep in mind that I left the skin on the front of the thigh, we're only trimming the excess that folds over to the back. You have one other bit of fat that you need to trim off your thighs. (haha Don't we all?)Anyway, it's not skin and it's attached to the meat itself. See here:
There we go. Now we're all nice and trim. Rinse the chicken under cold water, shake off excess water and add to your pan.
Here I used an 11x15 glass baking dish so I had plenty of room. It's perfectly ok to really compact them in there as long it's single layer. As you will see in later pics, they shrink quite a bit after cooking. After adding to the pan, drain any excess water that may have accumulated and add your spice. I used McCormick Grill Mate in Mesquite because I got a bunch of them for free with a coupon. In the past I've also used the Montreal Steak seasoning from Grill Mate or Famous Dave's seasoning. Really you can use any BBQ type seasoning that sounds good.
Once seasoned, pop the pan into a preheated (350 degree) roaster for about 1 1/2 hrs. Or cover with a tin foil tent and put in preheated oven on the middle rack. After an hour and a half or so you will have this:
If you'd like, you can stop here and call them roasted chicken thighs. They are delicious! If you're still set on BBQ, you need to drain about 90% of the juices from the bottom of the pan. Pour BBQ sauce over the tops of the thighs. I don't flip them over, just brush the tops and allow some of the excess to drip down to the bottom of the pan. I used Sweet Baby Rays sauce. For this size, just over half of a bottle was necessary. You don't want too much sauce, you can add more later or serve it on the side. Put pan back in the roaster for 20-30 minutes. I'm not sure why this next picture looks so red. It was not red at all but more like the color of the top pic.
Check for doneness, plate your thighs and you're done. Perfect!
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