Ingredients
Scale
- For chipotle bourbon cherry sauce!
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 lbs cherries, pitted
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- ½ - 1 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
- 2 tablespoons bourbon
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- For chicken!
- 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, excess skin/fat removed
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Bread or rice for serving
Instructions
- Make the sauce: Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and saute for 5-7 minutes until softened and just starting to caramelize. Add garlic and saute for another minute.
- Add cherries, salt, pepper and chipotle powder (you can start with ½ teaspoon and add more later if you’d like).
- Mix to combine and cover with a tight fitting lid. Reduce heat to medium-low and let simmer for 20 minutes. If your cherries aren’t releasing a lot of juice, add ¼ - ½ cup water.
- After 20 minutes, turn off heat and add vinegar and bourbon. Use a wooden spoon or potato masher and gently start to mash the cherries down. I like to keep it really chunky, but feel free to mash as much as you want. If you prefer a really smooth sauce, you can blend this as well. Set aside while you make chicken - this will help thicken up the sauce a bit.
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Season chicken with salt and place skin side down in a cold oven-proof pan. Turn heat to medium and let cook for 15 minutes. Don’t touch the chicken!
- Transfer pan to oven (with chicken still skin side down) and cook for another 15 minutes.
- Remove pan from oven and flip chicken. Check to see if the chicken released a lot of fat, and if so, spoon it out so that just a little remains. Then add about 1 cup of sauce to pan (spooning over the chicken pieces) and bake for another 10 minutes.
- Serve with rice or bread, with extra sauce on the side.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour 10 minutes