This one’s a keeper: three pantry-shelf ingredients, almost no hands-on time, and a sauce that bakes down into a sticky, glossy glaze everyone fights over the corner pieces for. It sounds too simple to work — that’s exactly why it does.
Why You’ll Love It
Only 3 ingredients — chicken, barbecue sauce, and lemon-lime soda, nothing fancy required
Mostly hands-off — pour it, cover it, and walk away while the oven does the work
Glossy, sticky glaze — the sauce reduces down into a caramelized coating with sticky edges
Reheats beautifully — just as good (some say better) the next day shredded over Rice
Ingredient Notes
The chicken — bone-in, skin-on, thighs and drumsticks. I have tried this with boneless skinless breasts exactly once and it was fine, just fine, kind of dry around the edges, missing that fall-apart thing the dark meat does. If you’ve only got breasts, go ahead, I’m not the chicken police, just don’t expect the same magic.
The barbecue sauce — and look, I have my opinions but I’m not going to name brands and start a whole thing in the comments, so I’ll just say: get one that’s thick, tomato-based, not the thin vinegary kind. You want something with body to it, because it’s going to do a lot of work reducing down in that oven.
And the soda. This is the part that makes people squint at me. Lemon-lime, regular, not diet — I tried it with diet once because that’s what was in the fridge and something about the aftertaste just didn’t sit right, kind of metallic almost, so don’t do what I did. The sugar’s doing real work here, breaking things down, helping that glaze happen.
Ingredients
3 to 3 1/2 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces (thighs and drumsticks are best — I usually do a mix, mostly thighs because that’s what my crew prefers)
1 bottle (16 ounces) thick, tomato-based barbecue sauce — eyeball it, doesn’t have to be exact
1 can (12 ounces) lemon-lime soda, not diet, and let it sit out a few minutes so it’s not ice cold when you mix it in
Instructions
continued on next page
For Complete Cooking STEPS Please Head On Over To Next Page Or Open button (>)
