This Honey Ginger Chicken recipe is a mild, sweet, easy recipe anyone who likes ginger will love. The honey gives you a delicious sweetness with the ginger and takes just 15 minutes to cook in a hot oven. We have this with some mashed potato or fried rice, for that take out feeling: All the flavor and none of the nasties. Yum!

Honey Ginger Chicken

Chicken is such an easy meat to have during the week, and everyone here likes it so I know they'll eat it without complaining. Chicken thighs are my favorite. They're a little cheaper here than chicken breast meat but more than that, they're so juicy and full of flavor. Chicken breast meat can sometimes be a touch dry when it's oven baked but thighs never let me down, they're always tender and juicy.

Grab the FREE 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge Pack & Take The Kids Diet From Zero To HERO!

I marinade the chicken thighs before I put them in the oven. This is one of those meals I have on my meal planner and so I know when it's going to be made as you need to marinade the chicken before you cook it. It's not hard, it just takes a teeny bit of forward planning.

I tend to do the marinade the night before and let the chicken sit in it overnight in the fridge. It could even sit there for a couple of days if the chicken's use by date allows for that. The longer you leave it the more the flavor develops so really, the longer the better.

You can pan fry this chicken if you like. I oven bake it because I reserve pan frying for when the recipe really calls for it and I like this done in the oven.

It's so easy to just lay the chicken out in a baking pan and pop in in the oven. Plus, the juices collect nicely with the marinade and I pour these over the chicken when I'm serving it.

I like to add a little of this pickled ginger to the top of the chicken when I'm serving it. If you like ginger, you'll love it. Completely optional :)

Honey Ginger Marinade

The marinade I make for this Honey Ginger Chicken is really straight forward. I make a mix of ginger grated fresh, a pre-made store bought ginger paste if it's just ginger), with honey, soy sauce and olive oil.

I trim the chicken thighs of any obvious larger pieces of fat and then pop them into a bowl, cover with the marinade, massage the chicken with the marinade for a few minutes and then cover with some food wrap and leave it until in need it, in the fridge.

If I've left this until the last minute (happens despite best intentions!) then the minimum I would leave this marinading is 1 hour. Any less than this and you're not really going to get the flavor throughout the chicken. If you do do this, definitely use freshly grated ginger instead of a paste as the flavor is more intense than a paste.

I use the left over marinade to brush the chicken before it goes into the oven, and then 5 minutes before cooking is finished I brush on a tiny bit of extra honey. This gives the chicken a beautiful shine, alongside some added sweetness!

I've recently been trying out these food covers. I usually have quite a lot of food in the fridge at any one time, be that making ahead or testing recipes and such, and I use quite a bit of food covering, or clingfilm. Every single time I use it I'm conscious of how much I use, so when I saw these on offer, I had to try them.

They're brilliant. If you can find some on offer or for a reasonable price, do grab some. Fighting to unravel the clingfilm wrap is a thing of the past. The only thing is there never seems to be enough, so depending on how often you're cooking, get a large pack, you use more than you think :) But overall, super super handy.

Make Ahead

You can make this ahead easily. I use fresh chicken to make this rather than chicken from the freezer, since I like to freeze a portion and you can't refreeze the chicken once it's been defrosted.

Whatever the fresh chicken's use by date is, is how far ahead you can make this. Nothing will happen if you leave this in the marinade for a day longer than you planned, so you could get the whole thing ready to just go into the oven.

You can also make this ahead of time and reheat it when you need it. Reheating this does mean the chicken loses a little of it's juiciness, so bear that in mind. To reheat, you can either put it into the microwave for a couple of minutes, covered, but there's a better way.....and that's in the oven.

To do this, get your oven hot and then lay the chicken out on a sheet and brush a tiny bit of Olive oil over each chicken thigh using a pastry brush before popping into the oven for 5 minutes. The fresh oil will help get the chicken crisp and sizzling and almost back to it's freshly made state.

You can also have this cold as a leftovers lunch the next day. I've often put this into lunchboxes with rice and turned it into a make shift chicken rice salad type thing. Or you could add some veg, or some boiled new potatoes and you'd have a filling, healthy lunch.

Freezing Ginger Chicken

You can only freeze this if you've used fresh chicken. Never refreeze defrosted chicken!
I like to make double portions of this and freeze one serving for another time. I make the recipe in full and then let it cool and put it in the freezer. You can leave it in the freezer for up to 4 weeks.

To defrost this chicken, pop in onto a plate and put it in the fridge overnight until it's fully defrosted. Once it has, you can then reheat it as above, making sure the chicken is piping hot all the way through.

More Clean Eating Chicken Dinner Recipes

How To Make Honey Ginger Chicken

Ingredients

4 Chicken thighs Trim the fat off before marinading
1 tbsp Honey For brushing 5 minutes before end of cooking
Marinade
2 tbsp Olive oil
2 tbsp Soy sauce Clean, check the label
1 tbsp Honey For marinade
½ tbsp Ginger Freshly grated or paste

Instructions

Turn your oven to 190°
Trim the fat off the chicken thighs and place in a bowl
Make the marinade. Add the marinade ingredients together in a separate bowl and whisk to combine
Add the marinade to the chicken bowl and massage into the chicken really well making sure the chicken is all covered in the mix. Cover the bowl and leave to marinade for at least one hour
Lay the chicken on your oven sheet, making sure none of the chicken is overlapping
Bake for 12-15 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked through. Take out of the oven, brush lightly with the other tablespoon of honey and pop back in the oven for a few minutes until the honey has turned golden and the chicken is really shiny
Remove from the oven and serve immediately

Honey Ginger Chicken Recipe

Print Pin

No ratings yet