Pepsi Cola Chicken Drumsticks!
Who doesn’t love drumsticks? While I don’t make them often, they are fun to serve at parties, or just hone hunkering down in front of the TV.
As a fan of Asian food, I am always looking for a new recipe – and I was surprised one day to find these “unique” potato chips – note the flavor:
Pepsi Chicken Potato Chips!
I discovered that in parts of Asia, cola-flavored chicken is hugely popular – as these “Pepsi Chicken Potato Chips” prove…so it made me want to find out for myself – just how good are “Pepsi Chicken Drumsticks?”
Well, I was determined to find out!
I found a number of recipes online, which gave me some ideas for the flavor combo that would work for me – and I settled on Pepsi, soy sauce and sweet rice wine cooking vinegar…infused with fresh garlic:
Here are the ingredients:
12 ounces Pepsi
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 to 4 tablespoons fresh chopped or grated ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
The first thing I did was boil down the liquid: I added a bit of garlic powder after 15 minutes to give it a bit of a kick, but as you can see, you just want to gently boil it down until it feels like a syrupy glaze…
There are many recipes online: many use Ketchup, some add BBQ sauce, plus onion, garlic, etc. But I kept mine simple…and after 50-40 minutes of slowly reducing the liquid – stirring regularly, I ended up with a syrupy Pepsi glaze!
Bring On The Drumsticks!
The next part is pretty easy: while the sauce is reducing, turn on your grill or turn on your oven if you plan to cook them that way – and when the sauce is ready to go, put your raw chicken drumsticks on a platter and paint them with your glaze!
I laid the drumsticks out on my gas grill, then closed the cover and let them cook for 5 minutes before I flipped them and glazed them again:
The standard cooking method for these drumsticks is to flip them every 5-7 minutes until internal temp of 185-190 degrees. I didn’t want mine to become too charred, so I moved them to the upper level after 15 minutes and pulled them off after 25 minutes – and here’s what I got:
The Pepsi sauce glistened on the drumsticks, and the crispy char on some was a nice crunchy touch – the sauce was indeed heavily “pepsi-infused” – a bit sweet, a strong cola essence, but the ginger and soy also came through as well – I loved them!
Pepsi Chicken Is A “WIN!”
If you like chicken drumsticks, this is a nice alternative to traditional BBQ sauces.
My wife Alex wasn’t originally thrilled about the concept of “Pepsi Chicken”, but she liked them as well – not a huge fan of the sweetness, but it’s diluted enough by the soy, ginger and rice vinegar to keep it within bounds…now, as I said, I decided to make these because I saw “Pepsi Chicken? potato chips – just one unique Asian flavor – look at this one:
Hot And Sour Fish Soup Potato Chips!
Yes, this is a real potato chip flavor as well! It’s one of many I found – you can see them all here:
Let me know if you’ve tried “Pepsi Chicken” Drumsticks!