Crockpot Sticky Chicken Drumsticks & Thighs

The first day of the furniture move, I also made a meal in the crockpot that turned out super yummy.  Wanted to share that with everyone as well, because it is definitely going to become a regular meal for us.

For special occasions, I bake a chicken with a spice rub called "Sticky Chicken."  It is super -- the meat comes out moist, tender and delish.

I got the recipe years ago off a listserv for freezer cooking when I was working full time and cooking ahead was a survival need for us if we wanted to avoid eating out every night.  The recipe is fantastic -- although I always use a bit less salt and cayenne than is called for in the original to suit our tastes.  It works with turkey, too, for Thanksgiving, although that takes a long time to bake (be forewarned).

It's pretty much a special occasion dish for us, because it requires serious basting every 20 to 30 minutes in order to get it that juicy, and it cooks over a period of hours.  So it is pretty kitchen intensive, and as busy as we've been lately, it just hasn't been in the rotation.

Mr. ReddHedd loves it.  I mean LOVES it.

So when I stumbled across a variation for the crockpot, I decided to try it and see how it compares with the original.  It's really yummy -- and much easier because inside the crockpot, it basically bastes itself.

But instead of using the variation recipe, I used the original spice mix -- with a bit of a tweak to reduce salt a bit -- and used bone-in chicken legs and thighs with the skin removed to keep fat to a minimum.  The end result was moist and spicy, just like the original baked whole chicken.  Yum!

Here's what I did:


Take a 2 1/2 pounds chicken legs and 2 1/2 pounds chicken thighs, bone-in.  Remove skin if it is there -- I pull it off the legs using some paper towels to compensate for how slippery things get, works like a charm.

NOTE:  I used dark meat here because white meat tends to cook so much faster and would have been really dry by the time I got home from helping with the furniture move.  Might try this later with chicken breasts, but will only cook it 4 hours or so to keep it moist and tender instead of the dry and stringy I would have gotten after 8 hours.

Once you have the skin removed, place all the chicken pieces into a large ziploc bag.  Mix together the following spices in a small bowl:

6 tsp. salt
4 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. ground white pepper
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder

Mix all the spices together well, then dump into the ziploc bag on top of the chicken pieces.  Close the bag tightly and shake it all over to coat the chicken completely.  There will still be loose spices in the bag, so rub into the chicken as much as you can with the bag still zipped up by massaging the plastic gently (you don't want to do this too hard or you'll puncture the bag, but do try to get all the meat covered and rub spices in to the extent you can).

Then you place the bag of chicken into a pan (to catch any stray drips) and then pop it into the fridge overnight to allow the spices to soak in and flavor everything -- the salt acts as a sort of dry brine for the meat as well.

The next morning, chop two or three onions and plop them into the bottom of the crockpot.  Then take the bag out of the fridge and dump chicken and any extra spices on top, set the crockpot to LOW and cook anywhere from 8 to 12 hours depending on the temperature of your slow cooker.  Ours took the 8 hour time to get done, but YMMV depending on brand, size, etc.

This is beyond yummy.  I made some rice and veggies to go with it, and we munched our way happily through the meal and had some leftovers for later, too.

The only downside for this recipe is that the gunk left in the bottom is seriously goopy and had to be soaked twice to get the crock clean.  I found a modified recipe on Creatively Domestic that recommended placing some crumpled aluminum foil in the bottom to lift the chicken out of the goop and I wonder if that will help with clean-up, too.  Will try that next time and see.

(Amusing photo via fiveforefun.  The orange ape looks like the darker ones in Princess Mononoke, doesn't it?)