In Maine, the middle of February means that we are on the backside of winter. The days are getting longer, and we’ve gained an hour of daylight since December. Instead of getting dark at around 4:00, it’s dark at around 5:00. What a wonderful feeling to have that extra hour. Unlike our neighbors to the south, we have had a moderate winter this year with some snow, some cold weather, but nothing that Mainers can’t handle. At least not yet. March is often a nasty month that can dump plenty of wet, heavy snow on us at depressingly regular intervals. But for now when I take the dog for a walk, there is often a bright, blue sky. Sun. Split acorns by the side of the road. And, at times, even the springlike smell of mud. 

Lovely though the lengthening days of February might be, our grill is still covered with snow in our backyard. If there is one thing about which my husband, Clif, and I are in perfect agreement, it is about our love for grilled food. We are fools for all things barbecued, and as soon as the snow melts, we are at the grill. A muddy yard will not deter us. Neither will the blackflies nor the mosquitoes. 

Naturally, winter is a fallow time for us when it comes to grilling. But thanks to my daughter Shannon, Mark Bittman, and my brother and sister-in-law, we have come up with a pretty good way of having baked chicken with barbecue sauce. Not as good as grilling, of course, but in the winter it’s a pretty tasty alternative. 

As readers of this blog know, Shannon is working her way through Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. For Super Bowl Sunday, she made some of his chicken wings that were pretty darned super—baked until crisp, coated with sauce, and then baked again so that the sauce turned crisp. We gobbled those wings, and I won’t tell you how many pounds she cooked. 

Last night, Clif and I were debating how to cook chicken thighs using barbecue sauce— made locally—that was a present from my brother and sister-in-law. “Why not bake them the way Shannon did with the wings?” Clif suggested. Why not? Perhaps the thighs would not be as slimy as they usually are when baked in barbecue sauce. After all, one of the pleasures of cooking from scratch is taking knowledge gleaned from cooking one thing and then applying it to something else. 

Here is what we did. We preheated the oven to 425°F, put the thighs in a pan, sprinkled salt and pepper on them, and baked them for forty minutes or so. Then, when the skin was crisp but the thighs weren’t cooked through, we removed the pan, drained the fat, brushed barbecue sauce on the thighs, and returned them to the oven. After about another fifteen minutes or so, we repeated the procedure, baking the thighs until they registered well done on a poultry thermometer. These thighs were fairly big, so they took well over an hour to cook. Smaller thighs would take less time, which means the process would need to be a little shorter. I would check smaller thighs at, say, a half hour, and if the skin was crisp, then I would drain the fat and start with the barbecue sauce. 

I am happy to report we had complete success. The thighs were crisp but nicely covered with the sweet, tangy sauce. Because we used thighs, the meat was not at all dry. Just as we did with the wings, Clif and I ate more chicken than we should have. 

But winter is long, chicken with barbecue sauce is good, and we need something to keep us going until grilling season is here.