Bacon Wrapped Chicken Thighs

Angry Man BBQ

This past weekend we were having friends over for a very casual dinner. With a greater focus on catching up with long-time friends than on cooking, I wanted something really simple to cook yet yummy. The Pleasant Lady and I decided on bacon wrapped chicken thighs – easy, fun, & super flavor.

A couple of years back we began experimenting with Myron Mixon’s recipe for Cupcake Chicken. Myron uses bone-in thighs and makes perfectly cupcake shaped servings as his competition chicken. It’s my habit to consider a recipe as merely a suggestion and I have taken the hint again to create my own great dish.

We use skinless, boneless thighs for our creation. They have great flavor and with no bone they are really easy to slice and eat. Our bacon is Boar’s Head nitrate free (aka uncured) that has been carefully selected to be as lean as possible. Those choices give great flavor but also reduce unnecessary fat.

I trim up the thighs to remove as much fat as possible on the exterior and then wrap one slice of bacon around it. A good shake of my rib rub is my spice of choice for these. I’d ordered a new mini-loaf pan recently and it seemed a prefect match for the thighs. The thighs go in the pan with their prettiest side down. A little extra shake of spice is always good. A great hint from Myron is to pour a little chicken broth in each little cup with the thighs to keep them moist and add another bit of flavor.

The large BGE was set up for indirect cooking with the platesetter (aka conveggtor) in with legs up and the grill grate. Our target temp was 300-325 and we’d let the BGE stabilize while we were prepping the thighs. The pan went on the grid and we left them in to cook for about and hour and a half. Yep, they topped the 165 done temp for chicken at that point - but remember that’s a minimum. With the stock and bacon grease they were going to be nothing but tender. I then carefully removed them from the pan and turned them upside on the grill grate. For great color and a kiss of new flavor I dribbled just a bit of my rib sauce on each thigh. Remember, I like the sauce to compliment rather than become the dominant flavor of my meat. I almost closed the top and bottom vents and then gave the thighs another 15 minutes in the BGE.

We served these with a tossed salad and a baked sweet potato. A little warm rib sauce was on the table for those that desired a little more of that flavor. My assessment was that these are really good – our guests confirmed that thought.

An easy cook – no frustrations – life is good!

Joy!

Glenn Martin
Angry Man BBQ
www.angrymanbbq.com