If Mr. Owl’s calling in life is to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the middle of a Tootsie Pop, then mine is to figure out how few sh*ts I can give and still get a decent dinner on a weekday.

Time: 2/5
Cooking and cleaning up in 45 minutes is nothing to sneeze at

Effort: 2/5
I wish every meal were this easy

Testing the lower limits of effort

I’ve been playing around with the idea of just drenching some chicken thighs in a store bought sauce, roasting them and seeing what happens. The impetus to finally give it a go came from scoring some dirt-cheap barbecue sauce that was nearing their expiry date. In a way, this recipe was an experiment on how little effort you actually need to put in to make a reasonably tasty chicken and rice meal.

I reasoned that barbecue sauce is already very well seasoned on its own with the same sort of things that I would put in a marinade, like salt and sugar and various spices. It should therefore work well as a store bought shortcut for a quick meal prep, much like curry paste can create a week’s worth of lunch without having to mess around with a mortar and pestle and a million ingredients.

So I thought, if I paired a store bought sauce with other time and effort saving tips like leveraging the set-and forget properties of appliances like the rice cooker and the oven, I should be able to min-max my way into what is hopefully the highest effort-to-reward ratio possible. How did it turn out?

While I was able to get the time and effort way down, I did find this recipe to be a bit lacking in flavour compared to my other, only slightly more involved recipes such as yogurt marinated chicken with mint, or yogurt and garlic chicken. Somehow, the chicken thighs only picked up a hint of the taste of barbecue sauce instead of the flavour bomb I was expecting.

I don’t think it’s the marination time, because overnight shroud be plenty. I used a generous amount of sauce, and even fortified the seasoning by adding some salt. So it might be something fundamental about chicken or barbecue sauce (or both) which imposes a hard cap on how much flavour is transferred.

All in all, I think this was still a successful experiment in minimalism. Making as many portions of edible chicken and rice as you can fit in your oven, all in 45 minutes inclusive of cleanup, is pretty impressive. And it wouldn’t be much more effort to build on this foundation by using a slightly more complex marinade ( such as garlic, or using yogurt and herbs), or even just glazing the meat a few minutes before they’re done.

Dramatis Personae

Served 4.

Skin on chicken thighs – 833g

The king of meal prep protein, in my humble opinion. Skin is delicious, and there’s no bones to take up space on the baking sheet that can be used to cook more chicken.

These deboned drumsticks come in at 12 pieces per kilogram, which works out to roughly 80g pieces. The odd number is because I stole two pieces from the 1kg pack for another dinner, and the remaining 10 pieces means three pieces a meal for me while the lady gets two. No knife work!

Barbecue sauce – about 100g

This brand only has about 400mg of sodium per 100g, and a quick taste test confirmed that it isn’t very salty at all. Which means I had to deviate from the absolute minimum protocol and give the chicken some supplementary salt. Besides that, it’s a nice and smoky ketchup based sauce with plenty of tang and sweetness.

Salt – about 2 teaspoons

Half a teaspoon of total salt per meal is a rule of thumb I use. This is probably less salt than you’re used to, so feel free to experiment. I usually end up using a tad less than that amount when seasoning my meats, because some of the salt has to go towards the vegetables. I’m also getting a bit of salt from the barbecue sauce, so I have to account for that too.

Baby napa cabbage – 2 cabbages

Always eat your veggies! Baby Napa cabbage cooks down to be really sweet and juicy, which I think makes for a nice refreshing pairing with the more bold flavours of barbecue sauce.

I would usually cook more vegetables for this portion count, but 2 cabbages are all I have and I’m not about to go down to the store just to get one more (they only sell them in packs of three here anyway!). I’ll probably make up for it by having an extra piece of fruit later.

Executive summary

1. The night before, rub the chicken thighs with barbecue sauce and salt. Marinate in the fridge overnight.
2. Make rice and preheat oven. Cover a sheet pan with foil and baking paper, and spread chicken thighs out in a single layer skin side up.
3. Roast chicken for 30 minutes at 180c/350f.
4. While chicken is roasting, cut and wash vegetables, then cook them in a pan with a bit of salt.
5. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

The chicken already comes in a resealable bag, so it saves on dishes to do the marinating in the original packaging. After defrosting the chicken overnight, I rubbed it all over with salt and sauce by massaging it through the bag.

Time for dinner! I got the rice cooker going and lined my sheet pan. Chicken in, skin side up, close the oven door and forget about it for the next 20 minutes or so.

Which is about enough time to cook the baby Napa cabbage. I cut mine into segments, gave them a rinse and drained them in this ancient plastic colander that has been in my parent’s house for longer than I have.

I’m not doing anything fancy with the vegetables, just a bit of salt. On another day I might add some chicken bullion powder, but not today. Not every meal has to be fancy, you feel me? Have everyday meals every day.

Checking on my thighs after 20 minutes, now that the vegetables are done. Good thing I did too, my oven had some hot spots and the thighs in the back were getting more heat than those in the front. I contemplated whether or not to glaze them with some more barbecue sauce at this point …

… and decided against the glaze, to stay true to the minimalist spirit of this recipe. Here are the thighs at 30 minutes, after flipping the sheet pan 180 degrees to hopefully even out the heat. Some of the skin got a bit more char than I would like, but that’s life.

Time to put Netflix on and dig in. A passable weeknight dinner, just nothing to write home about. Experiments like these put things into perspective – I’m now convinced that the small amount of effort needed to jazz up a marinade is well worth the gains.

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