Mango-Habanero Glazed Chicken Thighs

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A recipe for sweet and spicy chicken thighs made using Mango-Habanero Mead.

Originally Posted: August 21, 2020

Charred Glazed Chicken Thighs — Finished mango-habanero glazed chicken thighs in a seasoned cast iron pan. I like cooking chicken thighs in my cast iron often because the fat from the chicken adds nice layers to the seasoning.

Table of Contents

Quick Specs

Brew Used: Mango-Habanero Mead
Time:
- 2 – 4 hours marinating
- 25 – 30 minutes cooking

Chicken Thighs and M-H Mead — A close-up of chicken thighs with a bottle of my second batch of mango-habanero mead.

Intro

The Mango-Habanero Mead recipe started out as a friend’s idea. She wanted to learn the process for brewing mead, and I asked her what sort of flavor profile she wanted to experiment with; she wanted to make something spicy.

Once we had finished brew-day for the mead, we ended up brainstorming foods that it would pair well with. Chicken, salmon, and pork were brought up as possibilities for pairing, but in the end, this ended up being the first mead that I really wanted to cook with. Soon afterward I started on a second batch, so I’d have more to cook with.

The flavor profile I pictured for the ideal chicken was sort of a tropical fruity, spicy riff on honey-soy chicken recipes I’d seen before. I also wanted the chicken to be slightly crispy, so bone-in skin-on chicken thighs jumped out as the perfect choice.

Ingredients

This was a very experimental recipe for me, so I ended up making a separate marinade and glaze with slight differences between the two. I’ll continue to fine-tune the recipe in the future to see if it can be improved. Note that several ingredients here are marked with *asterisks; these are ingredients I wish I’d put in the first time. After reduction, the mango and habanero flavor in the chicken and the glaze were too subtle for my liking the first time I cooked this.

I’ve also thought about doing this with a mango-habanero cider in the future. This is partially because mead takes longer to ferment and partially because there are plenty of capsaicin-flavored commercial ciders out there that would work for this recipe.

Mango-Habanero Chicken Ingredients — Ingredients for both the mead-glazed chicken and a sort of quinoa salad I like to throw together as an easy side dish.

Meat:
4 – 6 chicken thighs (you might be able to scale up to 8; I ended up with a lot of leftover glaze)

Marinade:
2 cups Mango-Habanero Mead
*1 cup Mango juice
*1 fresh Habanero, seeds and stem removed
¼ cup Soy sauce
¼ cup Lemon juice
2 tsp. Fish sauce

Glaze: you could probably just reduce the marinade, but I wanted to try for a glaze with less saltiness from the soy
2 cups Mango-Habanero Mead
*1 cup Mango juice
*1 fresh Habanero, seeds and stem removed (optional, per your preferred level of spice)
2 Tbsp Soy sauce
¼ cup Lemon juice
2 Tbsp Honey. I used honey from a spare batch of honey-fermented garlic (a la Brad Leone) that I made as a part of a Garlic Mead experiment.
2 tsp. Fish sauce
5 – 10 garlic cloves
Corn starch in cold water (this will speed up the thickening of the glaze)

Equipment

Cast iron pan
Oven

Mango-Habanero Reduction Thicker — For some reason, this glaze took longer to thicken than reduction sauces usually do (even with corn starch). It also benefited from being in the refrigerator overnight, so making it ahead of time is a good idea.

To get crispy chicken thighs, you want to cook them in a preheated cast iron skillet until the skin turns golden-brown, then put them in the oven (or the grill if you prefer). Listen to that sizzle!

Instructions

If making the marinade and glaze separately, start reducing the glaze in a pot first. Making it ahead of time and keeping it in the fridge ensures that it will be nice and thick, but you’ll be using twice as much Mango-Habanero Mead than if you choose to reduce the marinade you already have.
Preheat oven to 450°F.
Remove chicken thighs from marinade and pat completely dry. This will help them crisp up nicely.
If you didn’t make the glaze ahead of time, you can mix it up and begin reducing it now or you can reduce the marinade. There are a lot of options here, but the glaze can take a while to become syrupy thick. Corn starch speeds things up, but you made need to add it a few times in this recipe.
1. Note: When turning a used marinade into a gravy or a glaze, you want to be sure to cook it all the way through in order to kill any bacteria left over from the raw meat. In this case, the glaze should be at a boil (in the beginning) and then a simmer, which should do the trick.
Add cooking oil of your choice to a heated cast iron skillet. Once oil starts sizzling, add chicken thighs skin side down and cook until golden-brown.
Place cast iron skillet in heated oven for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, take skillet out of oven, flip chicken thighs skin side up, and brush the top of each with glaze.
Return skillet to oven for 10 more minutes.
Take chicken out of oven and check that internal temperature is at least 165°F.
Let chicken rest for 5 – 10 minutes, then toss in a bowl with a little more mango-habanero glaze and serve.

After flipping the chicken thighs but before putting them back in the oven, brush Mango-Habanero Glaze on top of each. Save some glaze to toss the thighs in after they’re finished cooking.

Mango-Habanero Chicken Ready to Eat — This turned out to be some of the best chicken I’ve ever cooked!

Variations

During the initial brainstorming for this recipe, salmon and pork were also brought up as options. So far, I’ve only tried adding the glaze to some pan-fried salmon, but since I still have some glaze left over, I think I’ll try it on pan-fried pork chops.

Having fun with fire.

Mango-Habanero Salmon — Mango-Habanero glazed salmon with leftover quinoa salad.

Tips & Tricks

For some reason, reducing the mead glaze for this one took longer than other reductions I’ve made in the past. I recommend making the glaze ahead of time and using it on a variety of meats and fishes until you find a favorite. Storing it in the refrigerator ensures that it will be thick and syrupy.