Baked Chicken Thighs

We really enjoy baked chicken thighs. Mike chose this for his birthday dinner last year but like the week when I made these, I forgot to take pictures of the plated chicken. Sean doesn’t like the skin, so the last time I made this, I removed the skin from half of the thighs and trimmed up the skin from the others.

Usually when I make these, I just get out my seasonings and sprinkle the thighs with them. I give a very light shake of garlic powder over each thigh, about twice as much onion powder, a small shake of paprika but you have to be careful with paprika because it burns easily. Then sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

I decided to measure the spices into a small bowl so that I could give you some measurements but realize that these aren’t set in stone; I really like it better just sprinkled like shown above.

Here’s the measurements I put into the bowl.

1/4 teaspoon paprika
heaping 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
3/8 teaspoon onion powder
scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh ground pepper (just a couple turns of the pepper mill)

Combine the spices and sprinkle on each chicken thigh, placed on rimmed cookie sheet. If you remove the skins, you may need to add a dab of butter on top of each thigh, because there will not be any rendered fat from that skin, to keep the chicken from sticking to the pan and may cook quicker.

With the skin on, I cook for about 30 minutes on 400º, I think. Sorry but I cannot remember exactly what temperature or how long. I might have increased the temperature to 450º or even reduced it to 350º.