S6 E29: Baked Hot Honey Feta Chicken

Welcome to our last Three Kitchens Podcast regular format recipe episode! There will be one more episode next week to close out the show - be sure to come back for that one. And thank you so much for listening! 

>> The entire episode catalogue will still be available right here, where you like to listen! <<

Hot honey is a popular condiment that is enjoyed on all sorts of things, like pizza, fried chicken or as an addition to charcuterie boards. Heather made some to use in a recipe for Baked Hot Honey Feta Chicken. 

Our hot honey is made by simmering honey with chopped chilis, and then strained and cooled. There's also a tablespoon of cider vinegar stirred in at the end. 

The chicken is made by seasoning and browning thighs and drumsticks, and then baking it in the oven. When cooked through, drizzle with hot honey and top with crumbled feta cheese before returning to the oven until hot and sizzling.  

Get the recipe: 

 

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Transcript

Heather D (00:12)
what I decided to do was look for something that has ingredients I thought sounded yummy.

So this called Hot Honey Feta Chicken.

Here we go. Welcome to Three Kitchens Podcast. I am Heather. I'm here with Erin. And guess what? This chicken, yeah, that's about it. That sums it up. This is our last recipe for Heather D podcast.

Erin W (00:28)
Hello.

Chicken butt.

Sorry.

Yeah, crazy. It's a little bit funny.

Heather D (00:40)
Weird.

Yeah,

I mean, come on. Five years and here we are.

Erin W (00:47)
Five years, 250,

more than 250 episodes and more than 250 recipes, probably twice that, since some episodes we like to take on two or three. Crazy.

Heather D (00:57)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah I know. So I think we're going to do like a little wrap-up shorty bonus, not bonus, but our very final final episode to kind of wrap up the whole show. this is our last regular format recipe cooking episode.

Erin W (01:08)
Yes.

This is the last

time Heather's ever gonna cook for me. No, I won't let it be. I'm just gonna show up at your house and be like, feed me.

Heather D (01:22)
No, you've just...

Feed me.

Well, I mean, like, I could just show up at your door. Delivery! And the beauty of it is I won't have to take any video of it. I won't have to take photos of it. I won't have to type up the recipe.

Erin W (01:34)
Right?

You can save that for your outgoing

interview, Heather.

Heather D (01:44)
You know what I mean? Like I could still do it but it'll be more fun because I won't have all the other work around it. quite exciting

Erin W (01:45)
⁓ my god.

Heather D (01:50)
I put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with what is the recipe going to be for the very final episode. And I was like cursing that I had to be the one to come the final recipe.

Erin W (02:01)
Haha.

Heather D (02:02)
I wondered, should it be like something that's a major challenge? Cause we've done some really challenging experiments. And we've also done some really easy, quick win kind of recipes. And I couldn't decide what's the way to go out. But at the end of the day, I was like, okay, I only have so much energy. It's a time of year when trying to like,

Erin W (02:08)
Mm.

Heather D (02:23)
get to the run up to the end of school. We're sick of winter, so our energy is waning. We're kind of just, so. ⁓

Erin W (02:32)
We're half-assing everything

right now. So, welcome.

Heather D (02:35)
Yeah,

if you also are, maybe this recipe will be good for you. I decided, yeah, this is well, I think it's a recipe for anyone who just likes to eat things that taste good. Now I say that not having eaten it, but what I decided to do was look for something that has ingredients that I like to eat that I thought sounded yummy.

Erin W (02:37)
This is the recipe for you.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Heather D (02:58)
And that's how I, that's just what I chose. So this is called Hot Honey Feta Chicken.

Hot honey. Now this seems to have shown up in the past few years as kind of like a trendy condiment to put on kind of everything.

Erin W (03:10)
Yeah.

Heather D (03:17)
and I've never eaten it, have you?

Erin W (03:18)
No, I have also seen it everywhere and it's been on that back burner of like, ⁓ I should make hot honey. But ⁓ I'm so excited. I don't know, I haven't known what this is and it's been killing me since you were like, ⁓ I'm ready to go,

Heather D (03:20)
You

Okay so hot honey since we've never eaten it clearly we haven't made it that's part one. Looks easy enough I believe it is liquid honey and you simmer it with some type of hot chili. I've seen things from everything from just dried chili flakes to like smoked chilies I don't know could be almost anything.

Erin W (03:39)
Cool.

Right?

I've seen it be fermented, like where you put the honey in and you let it sit for period of time. And then, yeah.

Heather D (04:03)
Hello.

I haven't seen that. Might depend how much time that takes. We're running out of time, Erin.

Erin W (04:05)
can find that real.

I was gonna say,

we're kinda cutting it close, so just boil it up.

Heather D (04:13)
Yeah, I'll just, it could always be something to try the next time. You know, like, I'll see how it goes. Okay. So this looks fairly simple. We've got chicken breasts. Paprika, oregano, thyme, hot honey, garlic, more red pepper flakes, lemon.

Erin W (04:17)
yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Heather D (04:32)
cheese, cherry tomatoes, parsley. So very Mediterranean sounding ingredients.

Erin W (04:38)
This also sounds like it'd be great once we get out barbecuing and stuff in the summer. Like these types of flavors are things I want to eat when it's hot out.

Heather D (04:47)
want to eat them all the time. They sound so good. This is baked. and I'm thinking I need to make a special trip over to Spring Bank Cheezus for that amazing feta that they I wonder if they've got it in.

Erin W (05:00)
They better have it all the time.

Heather D (05:01)
You know what? I'm almost ashamed to say I have not been in there since they moved and that's been a long time.

Erin W (05:07)
Me

Heather D (05:08)
so this particular recipe just lists hot honey as an ingredient so it's not suggesting you make it but of course i'm gonna make it that seems simple right i'm not gonna it probably is faster to make than it is to go and find where to buy so that's my plan

Erin W (05:22)
That seems to be sometimes

the way it is, isn't it?

Heather D (05:25)
Yeah, sometimes with these sort of specialty condiments or ingredients. So that's it. That's what we're doing for our final recipe, Heather D.

Erin W (05:35)
It all

ends here.

this is gonna be great. This is making me think of like, you know how, you ever made like, or had red pepper jelly? When you have that with like goat cheese on a charcuterie? This is like that, but better, because it's not just sugar, it's honey.

Heather D (05:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah!

spice too. Yeah, you can make it as hot or as mild as you want. Yeah. Okay. There we go. So in just like a minute, I'll be telling you how to make it. Do the magic. Podcasting. You'll have eaten it and we'll be on our final review. ⁓ God.

Erin W (06:05)
and I'll have eaten it.

Heather D (06:33)
Geez, welcome to the last, the last recording. It's only been five years. What do we know what to do with ourselves? All right, let's talk about making some hot honey feta chicken. We just recorded your sushi ish. And you kind of said there wasn't really a recipe.

Erin W (06:34)
Real professional up in here.

Good God no.

Heather D (06:52)
I suppose there is a recipe with this chicken, but I didn't really follow one. It was definitely one of those wing in it kind of meals. just, I was like looking at recipes and then I was like, I think I can figure this out. In hindsight, maybe I should have followed a recipe, but well, we're going to find out. We're going to, we're going to talk about it. ⁓ and mainly only because I have to now write it up and guess what happens.

Erin W (07:10)
Okay.

you

Heather D (07:15)
You understand,

Erin, you know what I'm talking about because every time we do one of these we have to then go to the website and write up a recipe and sometimes we don't remember what we did and if you don't follow another recipe it's really hard to write up a recipe, let me tell you.

Erin W (07:18)
feel your pain Heather. ⁓ I feel it.

Yes.

It sure sucks.

And if you want to hear before we jump into this, while this is our last recipe of Heather D podcast, we are going to come back with a little shorty at the end to wrap everything up for ourselves and for you, listener, so that you can, you know, feel like everything's been put in a nice little box with a bow on it. Next week.

Heather D (07:36)
Hmm.

Yes, next week. Yeah,

so tune in next week for a little wrap up. Okay, hot honey. So simple. So I didn't have time to ferment like you had looked up, but I do want to try that. I am going to try that at some point. I didn't have time for that. So I did one cup of liquid honey and I had fresh chilies.

Erin W (08:07)
Mm-hmm.

Heather D (08:15)
which I think were Fresno. They're the red ones that look like jalapenos, but they're red.

Erin W (08:20)
they're kinda like short and stubby, like a witch's hat upside down.

Heather D (08:22)
Yeah,

yeah, kind of, but a little longer maybe. don't know. Anyway, I had two of those and I just chopped them and I didn't worry too much about the seeds or no seeds or the pith or whatever. I just kind of put it all in there and not all the seeds got in the pot. I didn't worry about it. I put the chilies and honey together and I put it on the stove and I simmered, not boiled.

Erin W (08:26)
Okay, yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Okay.

Heather D (08:47)
simmered

for I think about 15 minutes just on low like just a low simmer letting it simmer away and

Erin W (08:55)
What is simmering

honey? Because I imagine like we've been down the route of trying to make candy before where you're melting sugar or put it and if it boils for too long or not long enough it can change the texture but your honey seems like honey at the end so I wanted to ask about that heating process a bit.

Heather D (09:15)
You're asking me to get technical. No, I kept it low heat and so that there were little bubbles, but it was definitely not getting like foamy or because I didn't want it to boil. I was really watching that it's just something's going on, but not much. You know what I mean?

Erin W (09:15)
Just low, just low heat or okay.

Okay.

Right.

Okay,

okay, that's where I was curious. was like, did you actually get it boiling? Did you have to stir it a bunch? Did you, okay. Okay, see, you've answered my questions. Thank you.

Heather D (09:39)
Nope. Nope.

Okay,

good. I was worried you were gonna ask about temperature or something and I didn't track that. Clearly, I think you know by now there's no real recipe here. Okay, then take it off the heat and stir in about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. This I read in a few different places. I don't exactly know the reason. It sounds like some people do, some people don't. I think it might be just to kind of balance out the sweetness maybe. I don't know. It'd be interesting to try it both ways and see if.

Erin W (09:46)
Gosh no. Don't worry.

Hmm.

Heather D (10:10)
you taste any difference because I don't know what exactly it did, but I did it.

Erin W (10:15)
I always like vinegar

in like everything, so if somebody says put vinegar in I'm like, yep, sure, go for it.

Heather D (10:20)
Well,

I always figure there must be some scientific reason for it or something. It usually is with acid, right? Whenever you're at, maybe to counteract the heat of the pepper. I don't know if there's some.

Erin W (10:24)
Hopefully.

Yep.

Yeah.

Heather D (10:32)
anyone knows and you're listening and you have the answer feel free to join us over on Instagram or somewhere and tell us what you know about it. Okay and then I strained out the peppers through a fine sieve and left the honey to cool on my countertop. That was all I did. I believe if you were to use like a dried chili flake you would just leave it in there. You don't need to strain those out.

That's my impression from my very limited research on this. Okay, so that's what I did. For the chicken, so we had a little bit, I don't remember if it was on recording or off recording. We debated a little bit about what cut, bone in, bone out. We both like skin on our chicken. I don't like really bone in. It tastes good bone in. I don't like to eat it. I don't know, I'm a...

Erin W (10:58)
Sounds good to me.

Yes.

It's irritating to eat when it's bone in, right? Yeah. And I feel like I still have to like either chop the chicken off of my kid's bones or because they'll just like do a very like rudimentary job of getting off the big chunks. And then there's still, I'm like, there's still so much meat on here.

Heather D (11:19)
Whatever.

And I don't want to gnaw on a bone. just don't. I'm just the weird weirdo.

That's me. That's what happens to me.

Erin W (11:41)
See, I would pick up your chicken and

then I would finish it. That's what I do, yeah. See?

Heather D (11:45)
My husband does it. Cause I'm

like, I don't know. had I found, you know, skin on boneless, I probably, you never find that. don't think, but I didn't. Anyway, I had thighs and drumsticks.

Erin W (11:55)
It's like impossible, isn't it? Yeah.

Heather D (12:00)
I seasoned them.

little loosey goosey with what I put on there. think there was some oregano, basil, salt and pepper, a little garlic powder. like brown the chicken in a cast iron pan. Move it onto a sheet pan. I recommend putting down some parchment because you're going to have honey on that pan and it will be a sticky mess to clean up later. So put down some parchment, put your chicken onto the pan. had to do this in a couple of

Erin W (12:10)
Yeah.

you

you

and

Heather D (12:25)
batches because my cast iron pan only fits so much chicken. Then we're going to bake it just like this. it for well until you get your internal temp which if I remember is what is it for chicken 165 I think. Then take it out add your crumbled feta cheese drizzle honey all over in fact I think I did the honey first doesn't matter honey and

Feta. Put it back in the oven for five to ten more minutes so that it's bubbling a little bit. then when you go to eat it you can add more honey to it if you want to.

I'd like to hear what you thought before I give my how many Heather heads do I give this?

Erin W (13:00)
Okay, yeah.

This was, you won? Even this morning, my husband said, please thank Heather again for that chicken. It was so good. So we discussed this off recording, but the sick has hit our house and everyone has got some sort of sickness. And when you came to drop things off, I was in bed, my kid grabbed it out of your hand and slammed the door in your face. And...

Heather D (13:11)
Really?

You sure did.

Erin W (13:29)
So then we were, my husband came home and was like, oh, I feel like ass. He crawled into bed and we're lying there and five o'clock rolls around and he's like, what are we gonna do for dinner? And I was like, I don't know, but I'll figure something out. And I wander out and I remember, oh, Heather dropped off this chicken. Heather made dinner for us. was, you know what, all I had to do, I, I,

Heather D (13:51)
It was only some chicken.

Erin W (13:55)
heated up some frozen green beans and made some rice and that was about all I could handle last night. And I just heat up the chicken in a dish in the oven until it was warm. Everybody loved it. My one son was like, is there honey in this? ⁓ I like this. Like everyone picked out all the delicious flavors. There was a moment of, ⁓ last Heather D meal.

Heather D (14:20)
I know we had that at our house too. this is kind of sad. And I was just like, woo.

Erin W (14:25)
It was so good. Everyone really liked it and there was like, ooh, what is this? it's feta cheese. ⁓ yum, yum. Yeah, there was nothing but positives, nothing but happiness.

Heather D (14:35)
Okay, good. Well, aside from the bone, the chicken on the bone, which I didn't love and I kind of regretted, was like, I don't know. I didn't feel like the honey was like super flavorful. I felt like the honey was missing something or like you could taste the sweetness and there was a little bit of the heat, but it wasn't like I thought it was gonna be more

Erin W (14:37)
You seem somewhat... Yeah.

Yes.

Heather D (15:00)
flavor from that hot honey. I don't know what I was expecting exactly but it didn't wow me the way I had imagined it might. And the honey on its own, it was good but I feel like again maybe I need to play with like what type of chili, how long you simmer it, maybe there's a maybe I'd like something smoky-ish a little bit more.

Erin W (15:03)
I see what you're saying.

Yes.

Maybe the

Maybe the fermentation process of letting it sit for two weeks and really like change, right? Cause fermentation isn't just picking up the flavor. It's changing what's going on when you do that. I think it would add a more intense depth of flavor and probably more complex flavor. And I think the one I saw had like garlic and peppers.

Heather D (15:48)
Yeah, like a bit more flavor profile. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin W (15:50)
And yeah, I have to say

I can't really say much about flavour profiles with my sinuses right now, so I was just like really happy that everyone else could taste what was going on. Yeah.

Heather D (16:03)
Yeah, yeah, my family really liked it. They thought it was good,

but I just was expecting more of a, I don't know what I was expecting, more like you could really get the hot honey out of it. And I didn't really, I guess. I actually felt like I think I actually would like it more with like a fried.

Erin W (16:12)
Great.

Yeah,

Heather D (16:23)
chicken sandwich or something like that. Remember when I made that Korean style fried chicken where you fry it twice and you freeze it in between? It was like this whole big process. That chicken sandwich was like, remember we had it with bacon jam. It was like so good. I feel like you could do your chicken. If you had time in the inclination to deep fry, I know it's a lot of work, especially frying it twice, but it was so delicious and juicy. If you had that with the hot honey, maybe.

Erin W (16:29)
⁓ yes?

think even if

like you breaded your chicken and fried it and baked it, like even if like just pan fried it, not deep fried it, right? If you breaded, pan fried, finish it in the oven and then drizzle that on.

Heather D (16:57)
Mm-mm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I feel like I'd like that more. I don't know what, I was a bit disappointed by this.

Erin W (17:07)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Heather D (17:12)
But it went over well. It was well received by everybody else. mean, there's nothing wrong with it. Just wasn't much different than just seasoning and browning and baking your chicken. Like I didn't feel like the honey added what I was hoping it would add to it. And even the feta who was like, well, I don't know. Just a little underwhelmed, I guess.

Erin W (17:18)
No.

Yeah, yeah.

again.

think it's just a solid good recipe, but it's nothing wowsa about it. Which, you know, we've been here long enough that we're like, we want the wowsa.

Heather D (17:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I know.

We should know by now that the odds of getting a wowza, I don't know what the success rate of the wowza has been on this podcast, but I'm gonna say half. Half? Was it a 50 % wowza? Maybe more, maybe a little more. There've definitely been a few where it's like, meh, like this, kind of underwhelmed, but not disliking it.

Erin W (17:54)
boy. Heather to the archives.

Yeah, good but not great, kind of.

Heather D (18:11)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt about it. But I will make the honey. I want to try the honey in a few different ways and try that.

Erin W (18:20)
Yeah,

I'd like to see what fermenting does to it. I really want to make your fried chicken sandwich.

Heather D (18:25)
my God, that was so good.

Erin W (18:27)
Was so good. Yeah, okay.

Heather D (18:30)
Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. So thank you for, for listening to the last recipe of this podcast.

Erin W (18:37)
Thanks for feeding me one last dinner.

Heather D (18:40)
off camera we're like yay! Join us next week for the final wrap-up of Heather D podcast catalog will still be here. Go back and find that fried chicken, Korean fried chicken, find all the other recipes. You can still go back and make them all.

Erin W (18:42)
We're doing a bit of a dance.

Yes.

I challenge you, there are over 250 episodes. You haven't listened to all of them.

Heather D (19:03)
that

Erin W (19:03)
I challenge anyone

to say I have listened to them all.

Heather D (19:06)
Yes, I'd love to know. If anybody out there knows for certain, they have listened to every single one. I would love to hear from you. You win a, I don't know, a thumbs up. That's really lame. You win. Thumbs up.

Erin W (19:18)
Alright,

thank you Heather.

Heather D (19:20)
You're welcome. Goodbye.

Heather D (19:48)
Crazy.

Erin W (19:47)
Alright, don't fuck it up Heather.

Heather D (19:49)
Okay, I'll do my best. I'll do my best. God.