Butterflied Bimini Chicken Drumsticks
When making wings is too expensive, hack your way to flavorful party food by using a cheaper cut of bone-in chicken.
Equipment
- charcoal grill
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 4–6 ounces hot sauce of choice
- 1 stick unsalted butter
- 4 ounces honey
- 12 chicken drumsticks
- lemon pepper seasoning, to taste
Directions
- Make the Bimini sauce first. Place the cornstarch in a small bowl and combine it with enough hot sauce to make a slurry and set aside.
- Place the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Once it’s mostly melted, add the honey, the remaining hot sauce, and the cornstarch slurry, and whisk the ingredients to combine. (For a milder sauce, you can use 4 ounces of hot sauce, but I prefer it with the full 6 ounces.) Bring to a boil, and let boil for 10 seconds or so before removing the pan from the heat. Whisk again to combine and set aside.
- Prepare a charcoal grill for direct-heat cooking.
- Butterfly the drumsticks. The skin on each chicken drumstick comes up higher on one side than the other. Flip it so the low side is facing up. With the tip of a sharp knife, cut through the skin and meat on both sides of the bone. Follow the bone from the top of the drumstick to about three-quarters of the way down. Continue cutting along the bone to expose more of the meat, taking care not to cut through the skin on the other side. When drumstick is skin-side up, the finished product is oddly reminiscent of a stingray.
- Once all the drumsticks have been butterflied, season them on both sides with the lemon pepper. Don’t go too heavy because you’ll add more after they’ve been sauced. Transfer them to the grill, directly over the hot charcoal, and flip often. Because they’re butterflied, they’ll be done more quickly than a standard chicken drumstick. Pull them off when they reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees F, which should take about 10 minutes.
- Place a few of the grilled drumsticks into a bowl, spoon over some of the Bimini sauce, and toss until coated. Repeat with the rest of the wings and sprinkle a bit more lemon pepper seasoning over the sauced wings. Serve immediately with blue cheese dressing or ranch or nothing at all.
Notes
If you want to cook fewer drumsticks, you can make a smaller batch of sauce, or store the remaining sauce in the fridge. It’ll keep for a week or longer.