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Sticky and Easy Honey Garlic Chicken made fast and simple, with the most amazing five ingredient honey garlic sauce that is so good you’ll want to use it on everything!
A recipe that allows for the use of either chicken breast or chicken thigh, this dish is bound to become a fast family fave! This honey garlic chicken recipe is the perfect meal to have when you’re struggling to decide between sweet and savoury.
Catering to lovers of crisp and sticky chicken skin, as well as those who prefer a soft, succulent piece of chicken, it doesn’t get any better than this recipe. With a beautiful sauce and perfectly cooked chicken, you’ll absolutely love this tasty Asian inspired dish!
This super-simple recipe makes crispy, tender chicken with a perfect, sticky glaze. You may (or may not) remember the Crispy Oven Fried Chicken I made a couple of months ago?
Well, those crispy chicken pieces were scrumptious covered in our honey garlic sauce, so I wondered what would happen if I cooked some chicken pieces right in the sauce without any crumbing or breading. That’s when our easy honey garlic chicken recipe was created!
HONEY GARLIC CHICKEN
As you may have already noticed, we love honey garlic sauce. Overtime, we have created a plethora of recipes which use a similar flavour palette that you’ve all loved, like our Easy Honey Garlic Salmon, Easy Honey Garlic Pork Chops and our Honey Garlic Butter Shrimp.
This sauce not only tastes amazing, it’s incredibly satisfying to watch as it bubbles and morphs into a perfectly balanced savoury, sweet, garlicky syrup. The sauce thickens and coats your chicken as it cooks making for delightfully, caramelised chicken pieces.
The great thing about this recipe is that the recipe accounts for a generous amount of sauce which means you’ll have extra to pour over your broccoli and rice when you’re finished cooking.
CHICKEN BREAST OR THIGH?
To be honest, it’s really up to you and your personal preference. For this particular recipe, I prefer to use chicken thighs since dark meat is super moist and packed full of flavour. Although, we also enjoy this recipe with chicken breasts.
One of my favourite things about this honey garlic chicken recipe is that I usually have all of the ingredients ready to go in my pantry and refrigerator. I incorporated a bunch of staples into this recipe to make it as easy to throw together as possible:
- Honey? YES ✓
- Soy Sauce? YES ✓
- Vinegar? YES ✓
- Water? OF COURSE ✓
- Garlic? Not even a question ✓
So few ingredients needed for such an irresistibly sweet and salty dish!
WHAT TO SERVE WITH HONEY GARLIC CHICKEN
You want to make sure you’re making the most out of that sauce, so I would recommend pairing your chicken with some Buttery Sautéed Green Beans and some Fried Rice with Bacon.
WATCH US MAKE THE MOST ADDICTIVE HONEY GARLIC CHICKEN RIGHT HERE!
For more Chicken Recipes, try these!
- Browned Butter Honey Garlic Chicken
- Honey Garlic Sriracha Chicken
- Oven Fried Chicken with Broccoli + Honey Garlic Sauce
You may also love these!
- Easy Honey Garlic Salmon
- Lobster Tails with Honey Garlic Butter White Wine Sauce
- Browned Butter Honey Garlic Shrimp
- Honey Soy Baked Chicken Thighs
Need to cook it in a slow cooker instead? Try our Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken recipe!
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Easy Honey Garlic Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 chicken thighs bone in or out, with or without skin
- 1/4 teaspoon salt to season
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder to season
- 6 cloves garlic crushed
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/4 cup water or chicken broth
- 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar, or any white vinegar
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper to season
Instructions
- Season chicken with salt, pepper and garlic powder; set aside.
- Heat a pan or skillet over medium high heat; sear chicken thigh fillets or breast fillets on both sides until golden and cooked through.
FOR BONE IN THIGHS:
- Reduce heat after searing on both sides, cover skillet with a lid and continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through, while turning every 5 minutes until done. Alternatively, see notes for oven method.
- Drain most of the excess oil from the pan, leaving about 2 tablespoons of pan juiced for added flavour.
FOR SAUCE:
- When chicken is done and cooked through, arrange chicken skin-side up in the pan (if cooking with skin); add the garlic between the chicken and fry until fragrant (about 30 seconds). Add the honey, water, vinegar and soy sauce. Increase heat to medium-high and continue to cook until the sauce reduces down and thicken slightly (about 3-4 minutes).
- Garnish with parsley and serve over vegetables, rice, pasta or with a salad.
Notes
*For oven baked, bone-in thighs: Preheat oven at 400°F or 200°C. Sear chicken in an oven proof skillet or pan, skin side down first for 3 minutes. Flip and sear for a further 3 minutes until browned each side. Then bake in the oven for a further 20-25 minutes, until completely cooked through and no longer pink inside. Continue directions from the sauce, onwards.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
YUM! This recipe is incredible & I could eat this everyday with some rice and veggies. Love!!!!
Delicious!!! I want to put this sauce on everything! Thank you for the recipe.
I’ll make this again and again. I used agave instead of honey and cooked bone in with skin in a non stick skillet.
I just thought you should know — I use this recipe ALL THE TIME! I always use it for chicken thighs and once in a while for pork chops. It is so simple and so amazing, and it comes out perfectly every single time. Sometimes I add some ginger, just because I love the taste of it and because of it’s health benefits (I use ginger very often, especially when I make Asian sauces.) Last night it was too hot to cook, so I used a pan on the grill and cooked the chicken the same way I do on the stovetop. Perfect!! I made extra sauce for the rice. I’m a huge fan of sauces and make a lot of pan sauces when I cook. I’m so glad to have found your recipe, and thank you so much for sharing.
Epic recipe!! Made this like 3 times already
Super easy, very delicious, all the family loved it! I will be making this again – I anticipate a busy school year and this will help feed us well! **NOTE: once you get to the glaze step, be watchful. It can easily overcook/burn, and we don’t want that!
This recipe is decent. We buy boneless skinless chicken breast so that is what I had to use. First time making it, it got too cooked with keeping it in the pan while making the sauce. Second time, I made smaller bite sized pieces and browned the chicken and cooked through, removed from the pan and cooked the sauce without the chicken. Then added the chicken back into the sauce. I like the sauce sweet so I (approximately) doubled the honey. My kids loved it. 2nd time it was nice and tender. Great over white rice, with extra sauce.
My husband made this recipe tonight since I was working late BEST chicken thighs I had in forever. Perfect flavors sweet and savory.
First time making this with a few modifications but OMG! still finger licking good. I followed the steps and the recipe and made this dish for dinner tonight with organic chicken legs, the seasoning I used was Goya Adobo Sin Pimento (no pepper) the bottle with the blue lid. **I can’t have black pepper I get sick from it in my stomach and suffer from GERD. I did use organic chicken broth to make the sauce and added a tsp. of unbleached flour to thicken the sauce into a gravy. I roasted the chicken legs in my Ninja Grille Foodie XL and served with a sided of white rice. Thank you for sharing your recipes it’s been fun and delicious cooking these meals for our family. I think this is my 5th recipe from your site I’ve cooked.
I tried this with pork chops, and OMG it was not only easy and simple, it was fantastic!!!! Thanks for the recipe!