This meal could not get any easier. (Especially if you hand it over to your husband to cook it on the grill…you know…while you sit down, put your feet up, and read a book – ha!) ;)
We made this for Father’s Day, for the first time – go figure. Why in the world we haven’t made this before I will never know. It’s not like it’s any kind of mysterious, hard to come by recipe. You marinate your chicken in barbeque sauce and then you grill it. The end. Make a salad and cook up some veggies and you’ve got the easiest, healthy meal ever.
Our boys, who are typically pretty good eaters anyway (except for when they’re not, of course), devoured this chicken and declared it to be the best they’d ever eaten.
We had exactly one drumstick left at the end of the meal. Then, on “leftover night” a few days later, everyone was left on their own to warm up whatever they wanted from the fridge. When Matt found out the meal plan for the evening, he said, “You guys can have whatever you want, but I call dibs on that last piece of Father’s Day chicken.”
Oops, too late. Elias, our ten year old, looked up with a guilty grin, with bbq sauce on his face as he finished off the coveted chicken leg. :) I guess we’ll need to make this again very soon so Daddy can have more.
Grilled Barbeque Chicken
10-12 chicken legs (or other chicken pieces that you may prefer)
1 batch of homemade barbeque sauce (or your bbq sauce of choice)
Place thawed chicken in a glass dish. Spread barbeque sauce over all sides of each piece of chicken. Cover and refrigerate for 1-24 hours – depending on what works best for your schedule. Grill slowly and on very low heat for 45 minutes to one hour, or until chicken is cooked thoroughly. Spread additional barbeque sauce over the chicken as it cooks if you like.
I do recommend making homemade barbeque sauce so that you can avoid MSG and/or high fructose corn syrup that many bottled sauces contain. And I also recommend making sure the ten year old offers the chicken leg to his dad before inhaling it on leftover night. ;)
Did you take the skin off the chicken legs before grilling them? Chicken’s on sale at our local market so grilled chicken’s probably on the list for later this week!
We leave the skin on. :)
we like to bake ours in the oven in the bar b q sauce before grilling them until they are pretty much cooked through, and then just finish them off on the grill. makes for a little quicker meal if you don’t have 45 min. to wait for them to cook slowly on the grill, the oven requires a lot less babysitting!
Sounds like a good idea for me to remember once the weather cools off. We’re trying to avoid the oven at all costs right now!
Approximately how long do you cook the chicken in the oven before transferring to the grill? I can’t believe I’ve never made chicken legs but I’m really a white,skinless chicken breast person until I had a grilled bbq chicken leg at a church bbq last night. I’m hooked and can’t wait to make some for the family.
I love this idea..
Do you have a marinate substitue for Italian dressing? I used to love to marinate my chicken in that all day and am not at a loss for what to do!
Yep, here’s my Italian Dressing recipe: https://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/more-healthy-salad-dressing-recipes-italian-and-thousand-island :)
Your Italian dressing has olive oil in it. I thought olive oil wasn’t good for high heat cooking (grilling, broiling, frying, etc,). Any suggestions for a healthy affordable oil to use in meat marinades that stays liquid in the fridge, since canola oil is no longer an option? I wanted to try avacado oil, but that was too expensive. I have tried coconut oil in both fajita marinade (chicken) and bee, bim, bop marinade (beef) but since coconut oil solidifys in the fridge, it tends to clump on the meat, and I end up frying the meat in a TON of oil.
Funny, I have been wondering the SAME THING lately! The oils that I used to use for marinades are the highly refined types that I am now trying to avoid, but the only “safe” ones seem to be olive oil, which is NOT good for grilling or high temp. cooking, and coconut or palm oil, which as you say, clump when cooled. I have tried melting these and making the dressing with them, but then when I try to brush it on cold meat or marinate it in a bag, it gets lumpy. I feel like most of my marinade stays in the bag instead of on the meat. HELP!
What about grape seed oil? It has a high smoke point & from what I’ve read, is supposed to be healthy for you. I do find it interesting, though, that none of the whole food blogs I read seem to use it. If there’s a particular reason, I’d love to know!
According to this source (http://www.oliveoilsource.com/page/heating-olive-oil) we should be able to heat the olive oil to at least 375 or 400 degrees without any issue – and even then, we shouldn’t need to worry, especially if it is a high quality oilive oil. When we grill, we don’t get our heat up that high, so no worries!
OMGosh!! What’s wrong with canola oil if it’s organic???
Here is some information I find helpful in explaining more about why canola oil isn’t a good choice: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2002/08/14/con-ola1.aspx :)
Actually, I stopped using grape seed oil 3 years ago after I read that the ratio omega-6 to omega-3 is too high. Ingesting too many omega-6 leads to all sorts of health problems.
Thanks for the info! I will look into it further. Though, I suppose as always, everything in moderation!
Looks SO yum. What is the stuff between corn and chicken?
Ooh, that would be fried okra. :)
I first read this blog at 8:00 something in the morning, and I’ve been craving BBQ Chicken all day.
I love grilled bbq chicken. I’ll have to be sure to add it to our menu plan in the next few weeks. Anything to not have to run the oven in this Humid Nebraska heat!!
I must try your BBQ recipe now. Thanks!!!