Mama's Sticky Thighs

Another filth fest with food. Getchore pinny on, muthaf-ckers.

I do like my thighs good and sticky

This one has a bit of an Asian feel. Here it is:

Ingredients

For the amounts, just eyeball it

• Chicken thighs: I use 1-1.5 per person, depending on appetite and side dishes. I prefer boneless, because they cook quicker, and they're easier to eat.
• Salt, Pepper
• Soy sauce - I prefer to use a mixture of light and dark, but you do you, boo. My motto is, whatever you have in.
• Oyster sauce
• Special ingredient, bit weird but essential: Coke (from a bottle, not a baggy)
• An onion
• Garlic (I use Easy Garlic because I'm a lazy arse)
• Fat for cooking. My go to is vegetable oil, or veg oil and a bit of butter. Sesame or rapeseed would probably work well. You want something with a high smoke point, so not coconut or olive.
• Spring onions and sesame seeds to garnish.

Side dishes - carbs

Rice

Rice is my go to for this one. If your rice is always a disaster: One cup rice, two cups cold water. Salt. Lid. Boil. Keep an eye on it. When all the liquid is gone FLUFF IT (hur hur hur), put the lid back on and let it stand while everything else finishes off. It might naturally clump a little, which is fine - that works well for this dish.

If you want to make it even stickier, you can soak it first, to leech the starch out. You can steam it. You can boil rice vinegar and sugar (2:1) with a little salt until it's melted, and then mix it into the rice while it's still warm. (Move the rice to a non-metal bowl, and use something non-metal to stir it, because metal gives it a weird flavour.) Or you could go really crazy and cook your rice in coconut milk. I mean you can do these things, but I'm a lazy person who would rather be writing.

Noodles

This is the next best thing. Great for when I fancy something different than rice. Use dried medium egg noodles. The straight to wok variety doesn't work for this dish. (Sorry.) Cook as per the packet, drain, toss it with a little sesame oil and soy sauce for flavour.

Other sides

Spring rolls are always nice. I always have a couple of boxes in the freezer. (Translation: I think they might be "egg rolls" for some of you.)

You could stir fry some veggies if you want. The world is your oyster.

What else you'll need

A nice big fuckoff pan, wide and shallowish with a lid

A stirring utensil, which also doubles as a spanking device

How you do

1. If you're having rice, start that first.
2. Whack your great big pan out. Heat it up, chuck your fat in.
3. Finely chop the onion (mind your fingers). Wang it in with a blob of garlic, put the lid on. You only want to give it a minute or so to get soft (hur hur hur).
4. Quick, season your chicken if you can be arsed. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP if the chicken has the skin on, because salt will help it not be a fucking gross texture.
5. Make some pockets in your sea of onion and garlic for the chicken to sit in, especially if it has the skin on. In goes the chicken! Upside down. It's going to do most of its cooking on this side. If it's got the skin on, this is another thing that helps with the texture. It's also why you make the pockets, so the chuck has better contact with the pan.
6. Bit more seasoning, why not. Don't be shy with that pepper. Grind it baby! Do a little dance, like Ainsley Harriot. Go wild.
7. Lid on, allow several minutes (moderate heat) for the chicken to cook through.
8. Drizzle your soys and oyster sauces all over. The chicken, not yourself.
9. Really good slosh of coke over the lot. Stir it, turn those thighs if you haven't already.
10. Leave the lid off and let it reduce down. If you like it to be really sticky, more like a glaze, you need to reduce it longer, and go lighter with the soy and oyster, otherwise it will be too salty. I don't like it reduced quite that much, but I do like my thighs good and sticky.
11. I slice up the chicken when I serve, stick it on the rice, spoon over some sauce, sprinkle it with the sesame seeds, slice up the spring onions and throw those on, et voila! Done.

Notes

Why I love it: It's quick! Takes 20 minutes, tops. It's easy. You can make it faffier if you want, but even the basic version is pretty good. It's tasty! I find it tends to go down well with little kids because it's a bit sweet. My favourite recipes are the ones where you don't have to schlep out and buy stuff in specially. This one mostly fits that category, I think.

Oyster sauce: I mostly go for things that are easy because it's stuff you have in your cupboard already. This ingredient might be an exception. You can't really leave it out. (I know. I tried.) Even if you have to make a special trip to the shop for it, I think this dish is worth it. Plus, it keeps for ages in the cupboard, and I am confident you'll make my thighs sticky again.

Garnish: I don't usually bother, because I think garnishes are faffy. Extra prep, for very little reward. In this case, beyond making the dish look better, it adds to the flavour and texture. Don't skip this bit!

Sesame seeds: You can toast the sesame seeds if you want. If you don't have any, then pine nuts, peanuts or cashews can be good alternatives. If I'm using pine nuts, I do toast them. I want that crunch!

Spring onion: I know so many people who chuck away the green bit. Madness! Just trim the scraggly shit bit off the very end. The rest is perfectly tasty. And unless you've steamed some broccoli or something, this dish is lacking in green. It needs it! Not least so you can think gosh yes this is healthy, and forget about the (probably astronomical) amounts of sugar and salt in it.

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Thank you for reading! Let me know if you give this one a try!