My 400th Recipe: Crispy Grilled Chicken Thighs

 Today is an exciting day!  Today I am celebrating another milestone on my little blog.  Today I am posting my 400th recipe!  Wow!  I can't believe there are 400 recipes here!  If it wasn't for Blogger keeping track of my post count, I wouldn't believe it.  

I have chosen an awesome recipe to be my 400th.  Crispy breaded chicken thighs cooked on the grill.  Breaded chicken on the grill?  Yep!  I know, I was skeptical when I first saw it too, but it was a Food Network recipe and they very rarely steer me wrong, so I thought it was worth a shot. Best risk I ever took!


Crispy Grilled Chicken Thighs


Ingredients:
⅓ cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp onion powder
½ tsp salt
8 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (about 2¼ lbs.)
Vegetable oil, for brushing
1½ cups dry breadcrumbs
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt


Directions:
Combine the mayonnaise, chili powder, 1 tsp onion powder, and ½ tsp salt in a large bowl. Add the chicken and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.


Preheat a grill to medium low. Brush the grill grates with vegetable oil. Combine the breadcrumbs, 1 tsp onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and 1 tsp salt in a shallow dish.  Add the chicken, turning to thoroughly coat. Grill the chicken, turning once, until golden brown and cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes per side.


Makes 4 servings.

I made a few changes, mostly adding seasoning to the breadcrumbs.  I thought they should be seasoned too. This chicken is amazing!  So crispy and crunchy on the inside, while tender and juicy on the inside.  Perfect.  

This was the meal I chose as my "grill take-over" on Father's Day.  My husband had always done all the grilling at our house, but I was starting to notice that not everything was turning out so well.  I'm just going to come out and say it: things were being burned.  Badly.  Like, beyond recognition.  I had a hunch that the problem was that my husband was grilling everything (burgers, pork chops, bone-in chicken, you name it) on high.  As high as it goes.  Like 700 degrees.  I think it's kind of a man thing.  Some fire is good, so more must be better, right?  Wrong!  Father's Day was the perfect time for my grill take-over because I disguised it as giving my husband the day off from grilling.  "I will make the entire dinner, honey. You don't have to lift a finger!"  My plan worked perfectly.  Until I noticed that every time I came back outside to check on the chicken, my husband was standing at the grill turning the heat up!  So I kept shooing him away.  I grilled that chicken on medium-low the whole time, while he sat there trying to read his book and not notice how I was doing it.  He was very impressed at how it turned out.  So I thought he had finally learned a valuable lesson that day and that he wouldn't cook everything on high in the future.

He was grilling earlier this week, and he said to me, "You know, I think sometimes it works out better to have the grill on medium instead of high."  *Forehead slap* Duh!  I guess sometimes you just have to learn things on your own!

Here's to another 400 recipes!