Five-Spice Chicken Drumsticks (not the most photogenic of pictures!)
So I should make clear I do not just eat chicken, but they are a very good standby and happens to be cheap as well. I have a guilty confession to make in that I do not always buy free-range. I know… What would Hugh Fernley-Whitingstall say! Saying that, I do try to as much as possible to buy free range (we even have a whole free-range chicken in the fridge) and only ever get free-range eggs. Conscience clear… confession over… let’s get on with the recipe!
Recently, I’ve been building up my stock of Chinese ingredients and fortunately there are a few oriental stores in Sunderland. The reason is because I’ve been checking through the recipes in Ching-He Huang’s Chinese Food: Made Easy, and wanted to try quite a few of them! One recipe that I saw which looked quite manageable to do as a mid-week dinner was a recipe for chicken drumsticks that sounded delicious.
It also tasted delicious as well. I made sure to marinate the chicken the night before. The recipe calls for you to cover the chicken in a bowl with clingfilm but I found that placing 4 or 5 drumsticks in a couple of sandwich bags meant that all of them were able to be covered with the marinade. Because I cooked up 1kg there were loads of leftovers, and my partner was lucky enough to get a few for his lunch. Cold chicken leftovers are so good!
(recipe taken from Ching-He Huang’s Chinese Food: Made Easy)
Ingredients
1 tablespoon groundnut oil
3 garlic cloves chopped finely
2 tablespoons of grated root ginger
1 tablespoon of Shaoxing rice wine
2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
2 teaspoons of five-spice powder (I used Schwartz, which was very good but I might try and make my own at some point)
2 tablespoons of runny honey
1kg of chicken drumsticks with skin
- The first thing to do is marinate the chicken. Mix the first seven ingredients together in a bowl. Then add the chicken and make sure it’s all mixed up with the marinade. As I said, place the drumsticks into two or three sandwich bags and equally distribute the marinade. Leave this for 24 hours.
- The next day preheat the oven to 200C. Spread the chicken drumsticks (with the marinade spooned over) onto a baking tray and roast for 30 minutes, or my crappy oven’s case 40 minutes. Check that they are ready by piercing the chicken at its thickest part to see if the juices run clear. The skin should be golden when it’s ready! The chicken will be moist and tasty. I served this with jasmine rice and steamed green beans, and added some of the marinade to the green beans for extra flavour.
Just Don't Add Kiwi 