You’ll recall those three+ pints o’ peach barbecue sauce I put together out of the wicked good, but rapidly aging, Georgia peaches I scored at Trader Joe’s? Well, it was time to take some of it out for a test run…
I had some boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the freezer, a fresh bag of Yukon Gold potatoes in the pantry, and some buttermilk that needed to be used almost as badly as those peaches.
A plan formed:
Based on the success of my revised buttermilk marinade with Rich’s family a while back, I decided to tweak that recipe just a bit more – adding a touch more spice to suit our tastes, and to (hopefully) complement the peach barbecue sauce. Then, since it was just the two of us, I decided to bake the thighs instead of grilling them; AND, not entirely by coincidence, I could toss some Hasselback potatoes in the oven along with the chicken and call it dinner!
INGREDIENTS
Buttermilk Marinade:
•2 cups buttermilk
•1 tbsp Dijon mustard
•2 tbsp honey
•1 tbsp Cajun Power Spicy Garlic Sauce – nice, but I should’ve gone with Earl’s
•1 tsp garlic powder
•1 tsp salt
•1 tsp paprika
•1 tsp dried parsley
•1 tsp crushed red pepper
Chicken:
•Boneless, skinless chicken thighs
•2 onions, peeled and sliced
•Peach Barbecue Sauce
Whisk the buttermilk and seasonings together and pour over the chicken thighs in a gallon-size zipper bag. Close the bag, set in a rimmed dish to catch any leaks, and pop in the fridge for at least four hours or (you already know this, but it’s GOT to be noted), BEST – overnight, flipping the bag when you think to.
When you’re ready to start dinner:
Heat the oven to 400º. I set the oven high to accommodate the Hasselback potatoes, you could easily do this at a lower temperature – just keep an eye on the chicken and adjust your cooking times accordingly.
Remove the chicken from the marinade and shake off any excess, then lay on top of the sliced onions. Or, you could just put them on a rack – coated lightly with cooking spray – in a foil-lined pan.
Since the thighs were already boneless, they really didn’t need any pounding to lay more or less flat, nicely covering the onion base.
Pop the chicken in the hot oven for about thirty minutes – the thighs should be mostly cooked and just lightly browned.
Pull the pan out of the oven, spoon some of the peach barbecue sauce over the chicken to cover, then pop it all back in for another fifteen minutes or so to get a bit of a glaze action going on top.
We had our chicken with those yummy potatoes, some quickie baked beans from a can (I was fresh out of bacon jam, so no wicked simple baked beans THIS night), and some of those now nicely roasted onion slices from under the chicken.
Mmmm, mmm, good.
And I still have three pints of that barbecue sauce!