Roasted Chicken Drumsticks with Garlic and Sweet Potato

I cut my little finger accidentally last Friday when I was slicing onion for our beef soup noodles. It really hurt and my finger’s bleeding a lot. Luckily, my finger is getting better and better, close to completely recovered right now.

After cutting my finger, I didn’t really cook at all for the past few days. We just had some simple and quick dishes. The other day, we talked about how to have a better dinner without my cooking. Quickly, we came up with this conclusion: my daughter suggested herself to cook a main dish, my husband cooked a side dish. However, my daughter had no idea of what to cook. Coincidently, I found an easy and quick recipe of garlic-roasted chicken from Food Network. It appeared just in time as a life-line for us. So my daughter adapted the recipe and baked this heavenly delicious dish, roasted drumsticks with garlic and sweet potato using what we have got in our fridge.

I hadn’t used sweet potatoes to go with any sauce cooked with vinegar before. Before trying this dish, I had little doubt about how the end result would be like. Amazingly, I found out the taste was wonderful. The sweetness of sweet potato subtly blended with the tangy sauce went really well with the moist and succulent chicken meat.

Roasted Chicken Drumsticks with Garlic and Sweet Potato (Printable recipe)

Adapted from：Garlic-roasted Chicken [foodnetwork.com]

Ingredients:

• 680 gm organic drumsticks
• 1 golden sweet potato, sliced
• 1/2 red onion, cut into quarters
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• Kosher salt, to taste
• freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 2 heads garlic
• 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup chicken broth

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C (392F).
2. Rinse drumsticks and wipe dry. Generously sprinkle salt and pepper to all sides. Season sweet potato slices with salt and olive oil to taste. Separate the heads of garlic into cloves. No need to peel at this stage.
3. Heat oil in a skillet or frying pan over medium-high heat. Brown drumstick evenly, about 5 minutes.
4. Place sweet potatoes into a baking tray, arranged in a single layer. Add the drumsticks, garlic, onion and rosemary. Bake in preheated oven until drumsticks are done but still moist, about 15 to 20 minutes.
5. Remove baking tray from oven. Transfer sweet potatoes, drumsticks and onion on a warm plate, covered. Discard rosemary. Retain garlic in the tray (You might like to peel the garlic skin off at this stage. The skin of cooked garlic comes off easily. ) Pour chicken broth into tray, scrape up any browned bits with a wooden spoon from all sides. Add the vinegar and cook until boils. Then simmer until the sauce thickens slightly, about 2 minutes. Pour the sauce and garlic over the drumsticks. Serve hot.

Notes:

• I recommend organic drumsticks for this recipe if you can find some. It’s worth every dollar. The meat is heavenly delicious and tender. Or you might like to choose free-range drumsticks instead. It’s a good choice as well.
• If you like to use chicken breast, get those with skin on for this recipe.