A few surprise pantry ingredients inject an oh sooo scrumptiously stacked flavor profile into my Asian Cajun baked honey garlic chicken halves. Local honey and a whole head of garlic taste-electrify the crispy skin, while an easy homemade marinade makes each tender and juicy bite melt in your mouth. Yep and yay...
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Oh Asian Cajun Baked Honey Garlic Chicken Halves, You're Just as Easy on the Eyes as You are Oh Soooo Tasty on the Tongue...
If there was a prize for sitting around obsessing about new chicken recipes, I think I would be a sure bet to win first place, y'all. Yep.
I don't know what it is about chicken, but I just can't ever get enough of it. But, since we eat chicken at least two to three times per week, when you add in next-day leftovers, we actually eat chicken almost every single day around here!!!
So, developing new chicken recipes is an almost weekly game that I play all by myself. Sometimes I change my mind at least ten times on what to cook with the weekly chicken breast in the fridge. And, at other times, I'm thinking about how I can 'wow' Mark with a new chicken thigh creation, cause that's his personal favorite.
And still other times I'm staring down at a whole chicken, asking myself if I should just cook it one of my usual ways. Or surrender myself to the recipe development calling that's brewing deep down inside of me. And just go for it with whatever I happen to have on hand at the time.
Well, the other day I surrendered into making something new with the whole chicken I had. But, I didn't want it whole this time. Nope. I wanted it a little bit different in both taste and texture. So, I (I mean I had Mark) cut it right down the middle. And then I created a new marinade, and a new sauce, for these oh soooo yum-delicious Asian Cajun baked honey garlic chicken halves.
Asian Cajun Baked Honey Garlic Chicken Halves Boast a Feisty, Finger-Licking Taste and Texture, Y'all....
Once I got going in the kitchen, I knew that I wanted to make these Asian Cajun baked honey garlic chicken halves have a mix of ordinary, and just a little unusual ingredients. You know, to make the taste stand out from among the rest of my go-to gluten free chicken recipes.
I started with the base of fresh garlic and honey. And then I jazzed it all up with Tabasco green pepper sauce, and a little hoisin sauce, liquid smoke, and vinegar. I added ketchup for a deeper pop of color, and just the right sauce consistency.
The chicken halves cook pretty quickly compared to the whole bird. So, before I knew it, I was basting each half with the sauce during the last 15 or so minutes of cooking time.
Once Mark and I started to smell the sauce baking in the oven, we knew that we probably had a winner, winner chicken dinner on our hands. The rich, deep aroma of the roasting garlic pieces mesmerized us first, y'all. Then, by the time the sweet honey smells intermingling with the smoky, feisty supporting ingredient cast starting to rise up out of the oven, we were salivating in anticipation.
Once the bird was finally done and on our plates, there was a long, satisfied silence between us. I couldn't get over how tender the chicken was. And how the garlic honey sauce I came up with right out of my pantry came together so nicely.
But, I wasn't about to pat myself on the back until I heart what Mark had to say about the recipe. When he finally came up from eating for air, there was just bones on his plate, y'all. Bones!!
He looked at me and said, 'This just might be your best chicken recipe ever. The sauce, Lyn, the sauce is soooo good.' After I breathed a big sigh of Mark's blog-worthy recipe approval relief, I knew that I had to share this with y'all as fast as I could.
So, these Asian Cajun baked honey garlic chicken halves are one of the most flavorful, most tender, and most surprisingly different gluten free chicken recipes that I have to give. Share with those you want to food-indulge with roasted garlic, honey-infused feisty sauce yum-deliciousness. And see y'all on the yum side...
Asian Cajun Baked Honey Garlic Chicken Halves
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons melted butter or oil
- 1 5-pound whole chicken
- For the Marinade
- 32 ounces gluten free chicken broth
- ½ teaspoon gluten free liquid smoke
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- For the Honey Garlic Sauce
- 1 small head garlic chopped
- ½ cup honey
- ½ cup gluten free ketchup
- ½ teaspoon Tabasco Sauce
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon liquid smoke
- 2 teaspoon gluten free Hoisin sauce
- dash salt black pepper, and cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley
Instructions
- Cut chicken in half. Set aside.
- Pour all of the marinade ingredients into a large bowl or container with a fitted lid.
- Submerge the chicken in the marinade.
- Cover, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, flipping after 1 ½ hours. (You can marinade the chicken up to 24 hours before cooking.)
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Discard marinade, and let chicken halves sit on counter for about 30 minutes to come up to room temperature.
- Pour all of the sauce ingredients into a bowl, and stir until well-combined.
- Bake the chicken for 40 minutes.
- Baste the chicken halves with half of the sauce.
- Cook for an additional 10 minutes, then baste the chicken with the other half of the sauce.
- Bake for another 10 minutes, or until a digital thermometer inserted deep into one of the breasts reaches 165 degrees F.
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