Honey-Soy Chicken Drumsticks, Thighs or Wings
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
In the spirit of old-fashioned, unsubtle, crowd-pleasing recipes, I offer another oldie but goodie from The New New York Times Cookbook (Craig Claiborne, 1979), a recipe my mother pulled out for nearly every cocktail party she hosted and attended for at least two decades. The original recipe calls for wings, which people go gaga over, but the sauce and cooking method work just as well with drumsticks and thighs, if you’re looking for a super-easy dinner adored by children and adults alike.
While the chicken bakes for a fairly long time — an hour to an hour and 15 minutes — in the brief time it takes for your oven to preheat, your chicken can be prepped and smothered with the magic sauce, a mixture of honey, soy sauce, ketchup, garlic and oil, leaving you with an hour of freedom, perhaps to prepare a simple salad or side dish, perhaps to sit down with a good book and a nice cocktail.
As with the honey-baked chicken legs, it’s hard not to play caveman while eating these drummies — a fork and knife just can’t get the job done. What can I say? This is not gourmet cooking, and it’s not gourmet eating — you might just want to break out the moist towelettes for this one.
Don’t be alarmed when you open your oven and find this:
Once the bubbling subsides, your chicken will surface…
…piping hot, meat falling off the bone.
Try not (initially at least) to curse my name during the post-dinner clean-up:
After a quick soak and a teensy bit of elbow grease, just a few burnt edges will remain.
I have been making this a lot recently. When we have visitors, I double up on the drumsticks,
or use a combination of thighs and drumsticks:
Super Easy, Oven-Baked, Honey-Soy Chicken Drumsticks
- Total Time: 1 hours 20 minutes
- Yield: 6 to 8
Description
Adapted from The New New York Times Cookbook (Craig Claiborne, 1979)
Notes:
- If making a small batch — 5 drumsticks or 4 thighs, etc. — halve the sauce recipe but keep the cooking time the same.
- Wings are perfect for a Super Bowl party. Definitely cook the wings until the sauce is thick, which usually means 1 hr and 15 minutes. Wings are very forgiving — don’t worry about overcooking them (within in reason).
Ingredients
- 18 chicken wings or 10 drumsticks or 4 thighs and 5 drumsticks, etc.
- kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- 2 tablespoons oil — peanut, canola, vegetable, etc.
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1 cup honey
- 2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400ºF. If using wings: wash and dry, cut off wing tips and place on a rimmed baking sheet. If using the larger quantity of drumsticks and/or thighs: wash and dry and place in a 9X13-inch pan; if using the smaller quantity, wash and dry and place in a 8×8-inch (or something similar) pan. Season lightly with salt (as soy is salty) and pepper to taste.
- Combine remaining ingredients and pour over chicken. Toss chicken (with your hands, if you don’t mind, or with tongs, if you do) and then arrange skin-side down in the baking pan. Place in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove pan, turn chicken over, and return to the oven for another 30 minutes.
- Remove pan and turn chicken over once more. I find that the chicken is usually done at this point, but my mother likes to cook hers for another 15 minutes, which is what the original recipe calls for, too, although the original recipe also calls for a 375ºF oven temp. It’s your call — you can’t mess it up. I suggest turning the oven down to 375ºF if you do bake it for an additional 15 minutes.
- If your sauce is not the thickness you like, but the chicken has completed its cooking, you can transfer the sauce to a small sauce pan and simmer it down stovetop till it thickens.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hours 15 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: Asian
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
263 Comments on “Honey-Soy Chicken Drumsticks, Thighs or Wings”
Great recipe! Super simple and delicious, I grilled it instead of baking it and it was perfection. I heated the extra sauce on the stove top for 15 minutes and it was perfect to drizzle on when the chicken was done.
Oh wow, awesome. Great to read all of this, Susan. Thanks for writing and sharing your notes!
this is the best recipe..I used it for chicken legs & it was perfect & so easy..I love to use ingredients I have in my cabinet & this was perfect
Great to hear, Gail!
Made this for dinner tonight. It was so good. I did remove the skin from my legs to make them a little lighter and I also added 1 TB of Sriracha to the halved sauce because I felt I would want some heat and we loved it! Also I covered the pan with foil to make my life easier
Smart! On all accounts 🙂 🙂 🙂 I love all of these ideas. Thanks so much for writing and sharing. So glad you liked this one!
I love this recipe! It looks like a volcanic disaster and tastes fantastic! I make these for parties, as well as making smaller batches just for us. I follow the recipe and usually do the extra 15 so the sauce is thick and the chicken is mahogany (all but black). Thank you for creating it and I can’t wait to try the Thai chicken and coconut rice recipe soon:)
PS. I found it on Pinterest
Volcanic disaster: SO TRUE!! Love this so much. Thanks so much for writing 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’m cooking it right at this very moment came across your recipes and I decided to give this one a go hehehe let’s see what happens 😉 thank how for sharing with us 😊 I’m from usa 🇺🇸 bronx ny 😊 take care 🙂
This was a take-to-a-party hit!
I used chicken wings (unrinsed and thoroughly dried) on a sheet pan but substituted dark real maple syrup for the honey and cooked for the full one hour and 15 minutes. The sauce got thick and gorgeous during the last 15 minutes. Before putting the wings in the serving dish, I tossed them in a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds. For the final garnish, I sprinkled a few slices of the green part of a scallion. I brought extra cocktail napkins to the party — these wings are sticky — but so good. Gobbled up quick with multiple requests for the recipe.
Next time, I’ll skip the foil on the sheet pan though. The high oven temp practically forged the foil to the pan where the sauce seeped through. It would have been easier to clean a bare pan. Thanks for all your recipes….you are my go to!
So nice to read all of this, Kelly! Thanks so much for writing and sharing all of these notes. I will try maple syrup! Bummer about the foil… sorry to hear this. Hope your pan cleaned up OK.
Thank you so much for this recipe, The chicken was delicious! I should have doubled the amount of chicken I made because it was that good.
Great to hear, Ashley! Thanks for writing 🙂
I’ve made this recipe twice and both times I had great results. The one thing I did not suggested was use hot honey in the recipe. My husband loved it. It adds a little heat but not the kind that burns the tongue. Thank you for posting this recipe. I plan to use it tonight.
Ohhh fun! I love this idea. Thank you for sharing 🙂 🙂 🙂
Friendly reminder to NOT WASH CHICKEN, any food serving course will tell you how that’s spreading bacteria like salmonella all through your kitchen. When it comes to chicken, cooking it is what cleans it!!
Other than that, the recipe itself was delicious!
I had no idea. Thank you for posting this. Washing chicken is quite a pain anyway, so glad to skip it.
This was fantastic! Made as directed. So yummy!! Will definitely make it again. Thank you for the recipe.
Great to hear, Nancy! Thanks for writing 🙂
i added some cornstarch and water to make it a glaze and it was perfect!
Great to hear, Carolyn!
Followed the recipe to a T.
It absolutely burned and DESTROYED my pan.
Unfortunately not all online recipes are created equal.
Wish I could leave a photo
Oh no! What material pan? Does your oven run hot?
A standard 8×8 nonstick pan, and no my oven doesn’t run hot. Hindsight, reading the recipe, I should have known better that when you halve the liquid/sauce, you also need to adjust your temp/cook time. Your recipe started this did not need to happen if halving the amount of chicken, just halve the amount of sauce. As someone who’s been cooking for personally and professionaly for over 30 years, you’d think I would have known better.
Honey burns pretty easily, and at 400° for an hour, it’s pretty apt to burn. When I turned the chicken at the 30 minutes mark, it probably just needed another 10-15 minutes MAX. Or the heat needed to be adjusted down and cooked for the full hour. Which, a full hour for drumsticks is still a pretty long time, especially at 400°.
Baking the chicken first, and adding the sauce towards, or at, the end would probably work a lot better. Heating it in a saucepan instead would be a better way to control the heat of it and making sure it doesn’t burn.
Well, I’m really sorry to hear all of this, and I do think all the various variables you note play a role. The material of the pan, too — glass vs metal — makes a difference, and I do think things cook faster in metal (including your nonstick pan) pans. The original recipe does call for 375ºF… I’m going to revisit this soon with that temperature for the entire time and see what happens.
Samantha, I bet you’re fun at parties…
I tried this for Father’s day; it was easy, not a lot of ingredients and DELICIOUS! I made it with fresh corn on the cob and cauliflower fried rice. I will be keeping this in the rotation… we are both retired chefs and love this recipe!
Great to hear Denise! Thanks so much for writing and sharing all of these notes. Cauli rice + corn on the cob sounds delish 🙂
Egads, Ali. This was amazing! Substituted maple syrup for honey, otherwise no changes. Next time I might add some heat, but seriously it’s perfect. So yummy! Used a glass 9×13 pan for 8 smallish bone-in, skin-on thighs; no issues whatsoever with cleanup. Sauce wasn’t particularly thick, so boiled it for a bit in a saucepan on the stovetop. Currently coming up with creative ways to use this (incredible) extra sauce… Thank you a million, as always, for all the work you do to share these recipes with us!
So nice to read all of this, Kristin 🙂 Thanks so much for writing and sharing these notes. So glad clean up wasn’t a bear 🙂
Made your oven baked chicken with the honey, garlic, soy, ketchup. i used both thighs & legs, added a squeeze of orange juice to it. Huge hit!!! Thank you! Making it again for my girlfriends Thurs. night 😃
Great to hear! Love the idea of adding a squeeze of orange 🙂
Really good. But I recommend that the baking dish is lined with foil, or you’ll need a lot of elbow grease to get that dish clean again!
This is my second favorite way to cook chicken. It is my family’s favorite. I like more heat (see ‘East-West Buffalo Wings’) than everyone else.
I cook this for 1 1/4 hours but for some reason the sauce is never thick. So I thicken it in 2 saucepans and turn up the heat with lots of Sriracha sauce in 1. Everyone is happy. This is a terrific and simple recipe that I make often. Thank you for posting it!
Great to hear, Max! Thanks so much for writing and sharing your notes. Love the idea of thickening the sauce with some Sriracha stovetop.
Drumsticks turned out great. Adding this to my meal lineup! Going to try it but with chicken tenders, to use as a topping for rice or noodles.
Great to hear, Ed! Thanks for writing. Love the idea of chicken tenders over rice or noodles 🙂
Super easy and super tasty! Made exactly as recipe said, used drumsticks and served with Basmati rice and garden salad. The sauce drizzled over the rice was awesome! Chicken was perfectly cooked and delicious! Will definitely be making this again!