A few weeks ago I discovered that cornstarch makes the most wonderfully crispy surface for tofu and that discovery totally rocked my world. Wellllll this week I happened across this post on Cookful.com, which describes a similar process for chicken. Since I had some leftover chicken drumsticks in my freezer, I was all over that. After making my Crispy Oven Baked Chicken Drumsticks, I slathered them in a sweet and spicy honey sriracha sauce and I was in HEAVEN.
How to Make Crispy Oven Baked Chicken
The process is so simple. Just coat your bone-in, skin-on chicken with a little corn starch before baking. The cornstarch and fat from the skin combine to make a wonderfully crispy exterior, without deep frying!
What Sauce Can I Use?
I whipped up a simple honey sriracha wing sauce for these Crispy Baked Honey Sriracha Chicken Drumsticks, but you could just as easily drench them in your favorite BBQ sauce, store bought wing sauce, or a homemade raspberry balsamic sauce. Report back with your favorite sauce so I can have an excuse to make these again, k? Thx!
Can I Use a Different Cut of Chicken?
This technique is originally meant for wings (see my Raspberry Balsamic Baked Chicken Wings), which are much smaller than drumsticks, but I found that the skin crisped up nicely with drumsticks as well, and the meat inside was tender and juicy. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do the same thing with thighs or breasts. Just make sure you’re using bone-in, skin-on chicken and you’ll need to adjust the cooking time depending on the size of the pieces.
Honey Sriracha Chicken Drumsticks
Servings 6Ingredients
- 6 chicken drumsticks (about 1.75 lbs.) ($3.54)
- Pinch of salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 2 Tbsp cornstarch ($0.08)
- 1/4 cup sriracha ($0.34)
- 2 Tbsp butter ($0.22)
- 2 Tbsp honey ($0.24)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Line a baking sheet with foil, then top it with wire cooling racks to hold the chicken up off the baking sheet. For easy cleaning, spritz the wire racks with non-stick spray.
- Place the chicken drumsticks in a large bowl and season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Sprinkle the cornstarch over top, then stir until the drumsticks are evenly coated in cornstarch.
- Place the coated chicken pieces on the prepared baking sheet. Bake the drumsticks for about 50 minutes, or until the surface is golden brown and crispy.
- While the chicken is in the oven, combine the sriracha, butter, and honey in a small sauce pot. Heat over a low flame until the butter is melted and the sauce is smooth. Set the sauce aside.
- When the chicken comes out of the oven, brush the sauce liberally over the surface of the chicken, then serve.
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Nutrition
Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Chicken Drumsticks – Step by Step Photos
Start by preheating the oven to 400ºF. Place six skin-on chicken drumsticks in a large bowl and season with a pinch of salt and pepper.
Sprinkle 2 Tbsp cornstarch over the chicken, then stir until the pieces are evenly coated.
Line a baking sheet with foil, then place two wire cooling racks on top. (For even easier cleanup, you can spritz the racks with non-stick spray.) Place the cornstarch coated chicken pieces on the racks.
Bake for about 50 minutes, or until they’re golden and crispy. They won’t get super dark, and some spots that had extra thick cornstarch may still be white.
While the chicken is in the oven, prepare the wing sauce. Simply place 1/4 cup sriracha, 2 Tbsp butter, and 2 Tbsp honey in a small sauce pot. Stir and heat over a low flame until the butter is melted and the sauce is smooth. This only takes about 5 minutes.
Back to those gorgeous drumsticks…
Slather that delicious honey sriracha sauce all over the wings. As I mentioned earlier, you could actually use any type of sauce that you want… BBQ is an easy choice.
And now your amazing Crispy Baked Honey Sriracha Chicken Drumsticks are ready to eat!
I mean seriously, how easy was that?? I can’t wait to try more versions…
Love how easy these were to make, & how all the ingredients are pantry staples!! The end result was amazing, really made me reconsider buying crappy grocery store fried chicken ever again
All ur recipes look absolutely stunning n delicious
Omgoodness! These were so good! I made the recipe last night. I used skin-on, bone-in thighs. Same temp, 35 minutes. They were PERFECT. Served with sesame brown Jasmine rice & steamed snap peas.The sauce is worth making for all sorts, I’d imagine. It’s almost drinkable! 😄 I sent the recipe to my Dad. He’s going to try it on pork ribs. Thank you!
A rare Budget Bytes recipe that didn’t go over well unfortunately :( followed everything exactly as written and the chicken took a ton of extra time to cook through, texture was strange (inside was weirdly juicy and outside was grainy and not super crisp) and the sauce wasn’t our favorite (and we love sriracha!). Bummed that this one didn’t turn out :( we still love all the other Budget Bytes recipes (which we make like 5x a week)!
Delicious! We have LOVED every single recipe of yours we’ve made. Thank you so much for all of the simple, yummy and quick dishes!!
This recipe is literally life-changing–we’ve never done it this way before but you can bet we will now, like every Sunday! Devoured even by my son, who hates “bone-in” chicken. (I wonder if there’s a good way to do this with skinless drummies?)
The skin is the key to making it crispy, unfortunately!
Amazing and so quick! Delicious. My husband loved it. I used agave nectar instead of honey. Thank you!
This is one of my fav recipes ever — so easy and really satisfies a craving for wings! I like to leave them in the oven for up to 1h20 to let the drumsticks get extra crispy. I like the honey sriracha sauce but it’s also fun to experiment with the sauce. Buffalo, honey garlic, etc. 10/10!!!!
Fantastic! My boyfriend has a lower heat tolerance than me so I lessened the sriracha slightly, added a dollop of hoisin, a splash of soy, and called it a day. Like another commenter, I put the glaze on the drumsticks and then stuck them back in the over for a few minutes. Fantastic! This is a fantastic, affordable recipe, and I’ll happily be making it again.
This was so easy and delicious! I see myself using the honey sriracha sauce for a ton of different meals. For leftovers today I made a sandwich. Toasted a bun, cut the meat off the drumstick and tossed it in extra sauce, and mixed some cabbage with your lime crema as a slaw on top. So good!
Oh wow yes that sounds delicious! I may have to try that with turkey leftovers this week!
Wow, so these were remarkable. Warning, they are HOT, but a flavorful heat, not just a burn. I like spicy though, so this was great. I did this recipe with the same amount of wings and it was so good, I had to put the rest of the wings away so I didn’t eat them all in one sitting!
I’ve made this before and it was great- just wanted to let you know I’m making it for my Passover Seder tonight with your raspberry chipotle BBQ sauce!
Oh YUM!! Great combo idea!!
Delicious!…and super easy, using ingredients I keep on hand. Just one small tweak: after spreading the sauce on I baked the wings for another 5- 7 minutes or so and got nice tiny brown bits on the skin :-) .
This was so yummy! I found a package for 88 cents a pound at my local grocery store – it had 12 in it. I made 6 per recipe and 6 per my own. I used soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, peanut butter, butter, sriracha, brown sugar, garlic, chicken stock (better than bouillon) and pepper – all things I had in my fridge. These were excellent.
This was freaking delicious! Next time I’ll try w wings. Thank you so much!