A very hands off, but extremely tasty recipe – this combines the crispiness of the chicken skin with the tender, almost falling apart, meat. Though it does take nearly an hour in the oven, it will only take you about 5 minutes of prep work to have everything ready. So, once you get home from work, rub some chicken down, let it cook, and enjoy a fantastic meal – hands off, of course 🙂
I also want to say thanks to everyone that visits the website! I know many of you come and see just 1 recipe then leave, but I encourage you to start browsing the website and leaving feedback on other things you want to see. There’s tons of keto recipes, information on keto, and even meal plans. I want to make this the best resource for keto, so if you ever have any suggestions – let me know!
The chicken meat stays extremely moist, the skin gets nice and crisp, and the spices bring a flavor explosion! This is a very similar spice rub to that which I used to make my curries out of. So if you’re a fan of the curry flavor, you will absolutely adore this recipe. My whole family loved it – but unfortunately, that meant no leftovers for me.
It’s totally up to you, but I recommend using the excess fat that comes off the chicken while cooking. It’s very flavorful and…well it’s fat. We all need fats on a ketogenic diet – so spoon it over the chicken or spoon it on top of the side vegetables. Whatever you do, don’t throw it away!
Yields 8 Crispy Curry Rubbed Chicken Thighs
The Preparation
- 2 teaspoons curry powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/4 teaspoon cardamom
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 30 ounces bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- 1/4 cup olive oil
The Execution
1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Gather all the spices you’ll need – phew it’s a lot of spices!
3. Measure out 2 tsp. Yellow Curry, 1 1/2 tsp. Salt, 1 tsp. Ground Cumin, 1 tsp. Paprika, 1 tsp. Garlic Powder, 1/2 tsp. Cayenne Pepper, 1/2 tsp. Allspice, 1/2 tsp. Chili Powder, 1/2 tsp. Ground Coriander, 1/4 tsp. Ground Cardamom, 1/4 tsp. Ground Cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp. Ginger.
4. Mix together the spices well.
5. Wrap a baking sheet in foil, then lay the chicken thighs onto the foil.
6. Rub the olive oil into the chicken, giving each piece of chicken about 1/2 Tbsp. Olive Oil. Make sure you do this on both sides. Once oiled, lightly sprinkle the spice mixture over both sides of the chicken and rub it in. Do this a second time with the spices, making sure both sides of the chicken is nicely coated with spice.
7. Bake the chicken at 425F for 50 minutes.
8. Let cool for 5 minutes or so and serve! Most of the oil and fat will be sitting underneath the chicken, so it’s your choice to either serve this or not – personally, I like to spoon it over the chicken for extra flavor.
9. Garnish with red pepper flakes and chives, with a spooning of pan drippings!
This makes a total of 8 servings of Crispy Curry Rub Chicken Thighs. Each serving comes out to be 332 calories, 30.7g fats, 0.6g net carbs, and 13.6g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 2 teaspoon curry powder | 13 | 0.6 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 0.1 | 0.6 |
| 1 1/2 teaspoon salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 teaspoon cumin | 8 | 0.5 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 0.7 | 0.4 |
| 1 teaspoon paprika | 6 | 0.3 | 1.2 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
| 1 teaspoon garlic powder | 10 | 0 | 2.3 | 0.3 | 2 | 0.5 |
| 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper | 3 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.1 |
| 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice | 3 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 0.1 |
| 1/2 teaspoon chili powder | 4 | 0.2 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander | 3 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| 1/4 teaspoon cardamom | 2 | 0 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 |
| 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon | 2 | 0 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0 |
| 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger | 1 | 0 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0 |
| 30 ounce bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs | 2126 | 189.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 106.3 |
| 1/4 cup olive oil | 477 | 54 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Totals | 2658 | 245.8 | 10.3 | 5.3 | 5 | 108.7 |
| Per Serving (/8) | 332 | 30.7 | 1.3 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 13.6 |
Crispy Curry Rub Chicken Thighs
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoon curry powder
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- ¼ teaspoon cardamom
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- 30 ounce bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- ¼ cup olive oil
Instructions
- Gather all the spices you’ll need – phew it’s a lot of spices! Preheat oven to 425F.
- Measure out yellow curry, salt, ground cumin, paprika, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, allspice, chili powder, ground coriander, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, and ginger into a bowl.
- Mix together the spices well.
- Wrap a baking sheet in foil, then lay the chicken thighs on the foil.
- Rub the olive oil into the chicken. Make sure you do this on both sides. Once oiled, lightly sprinkle the spice mixture over both sides of the chicken and rub it in. Do this a second time with the spices, making sure both sides of the chicken is nicely coated with spice.
- Bake the chicken for 50 minutes.
- Let cool for 5 minutes or so and serve! Most of the oil and fat will be sitting underneath the chicken, so it’s your choice to either serve this or not – personally, I like to spoon it over the chicken for extra flavor.
- Garnish with red pepper flakes and chives, with a spooning of pan drippings!
Omg so good and flavorful. Served it with side of garlicky Parmesan green beans.
Zita, I think you’re the first one to make it today! So glad you liked it – and that side sounds great with it 🙂
Now I want garlic parmesan green beans. I’m gonna do that next time lol
Mmm, those are good. Even the pecan ones too, you gotta give them a try if you’re into putting some twists on your food.
Excellent recipe. Was getting bored of my pretty mild chicken recipe and was looking for an alternative until I found your blog. Went out to get all the ingredients mentioned. However, I bought yellow curry paste instead of the powder. Still made it and it tasted really good.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe 🙂
Arvin, awesome – glad it turned out well! Glad you found the blog 🙂
Just made this as it’s amazing!!! Served atop cabbage with coconut oil, heavy cream, onions and cauliflower!!!
Woo Meghan! Glad it turned out good 🙂
The verdict is in from everyone who has tasted these (I made it with wings instead of thighs and cut back the cook time by ten minutes).
“Best wings I have ever tasted”.
Served with Asparagus with garlic and lime.
Cheers!
Awesome Stephen, sounds like a delicious side dish too! Glad you all liked it and hope to hear from you soon on other recipes! 🙂
Super delish! I used chicken legs and they turned out so good. The kids took off the skin to cut the spiciness and gobbled it up. I had leftovers for lunch yesterday and tasted awesome, even cold!
Aww, you really need to get those kids hooked on spice. The skin is the best part!
Just made these tonight! Wolfed down two drumsticks that I subbed for one thigh (because my package had only 7 thighs)! So good! Eating the rest of my portion with the roasted broccoli and mozzarella now. Yay!
If all I have is skinless chicken breast in the freezer, do you think I can still make this but adjust temps and time??
You could but it’ll turn out a lot less crispy
Craig,
This is insanely good. I just made this, although I didn’t have corriander, not sure how much difference that would be but it was really good. I’m dipping my asparagus in the fatty sauce. The skin is super crispy.
I have this glass oven thingy, I don’t know what its called, but it cooked everything in a fraction of the time. I burnt the skin a bit because I was trying to follow exact cooking time. Found out it only takes 15 minutes!
Glad to hear! You have to tell me about this glass oven thing – 15 minutes for a chicken thigh!? Did you cook more than 1? If so, I need to find out where I can get one because that would be amazing.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/258zvvrg1m5ej0o/DSC_0357.JPG
That’s the picture of it. Its all I know about it Craig. I got it from someone so I don’t have the box unfortunately. But…its awesome! I cooked 2 chicken thighs in it. I recooked today, it cooked for 20 minutes, a little burnt again but I liked it just. Super good. 🙂
Interesting. I’ll have to look this up. 15-20 minutes for 2 thighs is still incredibly fast!
OMG, Craig!!!! I don’t like dark meat…I’m a chicken breast woman going way back. I decided to give this recipe a try and WOW!!!!!!!!! I LOVED that chicken!!!!! Thank you so much!
Awesome news Sally! I know how that is – I grew up eating only white meat, and then when I started eating dark meat…I just didn’t like it at first. Now I can’t get enough of the stuff!
My husband made this tonight. We are both doing Keto. It was amazing, flavorful, and went perfectly with some broccoli and cheese. This recipe is adaptable for any flavor profile. Also, it was easy to follow. My husband is a very inexperienced cook, he had no problems. The dish turned out prefect. We’ll be having this again soon. Thanks so much.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! It’s definitely a great way to impart flavor and it’s really simple to do – plus, pretty much anyone can do it like you said. Super happy that you’re giving such awesome feedback on the recipes. Keep it coming (good or bad)!
This is the best chicken recipe ever. Hands down. It’s so good, we had it two nights in a row. Easy, quick, and insanely good. The crispy chicken skin and all those nibbly bits on the pan put this over the top. I’m thinking of making a big batch of the herb rub, and keep it on hand to use in a pinch. That herb mix would be great on, well, anything. Thank you for a fabulous recipe.
This a staple quick go-to weekly dish! And its awesome, unlike some of the other baked chicken recipes.
There are 2 recipes where 6 chicken thighs are 2200 cals and 200g fat. So how in this recipe is 8 thighs 1680 cals and 105g fat?
I am trying to get better with the measurements I do on recipes. I try to include weights and estimations on weights. I used to just use the chicken thighs I had in the packet, weigh them, and do the nutrition based on that. So 8 small chicken thighs could easily be less nutrition than 6 large ones. Hope that makes sense – and I am trying to get better about this because I agree with you that it can be confusing.
Thank you for this recipe a thousand times. I use it for my chicken wings as well. I add some baking powder to make the skin crispy!
Nice! I’ll have to try that! 🙂
When I imported this recipe to myfitness pal it came in as 20.4 carbs. Any idea why???
First thing I would do is double check what MFP is listing as ingredients versus what is listed on the site. Sometimes MFP likes to do things like add 30 billion tablespoons of garlic powder or whatever and then you have to manually fix it. (Some kind of importing error.)
Thanks so much. I ended up doing it all manually just to compare and it ended up right on with yours. It was bizarre. Awesome recipe, thanks 🙂
Made this tonight. Absolutely delicious! Added some pumpkin and cauliflower in with the chicken while it was baking.
This turned out quite good. Only thing I would point out, is that it the first time I made this at 50 minutes the chicken was quite dry and overdone/burnt. Second time at 30 minutes was much better.
Sorry to hear – I tend to get relatively large chicken thighs so that may account for the longer cooking time. I am glad you were able to still enjoy the recipe!
I couldn’t find bone in thigh .. so I’m going to give this a shot with chicken drumsticks 🙂
Just want to say your recipes are awesome. I am not on keto but I have tried a lot of recipes and they are pretty great. Thanks:)
Thank you so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying them.
Keep checking the website for more keto recipes if you want to try something new. We update our recipe page every week.
I’ve made this with chicken breasts (boneless, skinless) and with bone in, skin on thighs. Loved it both ways. I made a kind of hobo pack I think its called. Where you wrap each individually in foil so I could bake one at a time and not worry about leftovers. I was wondering if you know what low carb veggie can be added to the pack so I could have a single meal packet?
I think most vegetables would do well with this recipe. I’d recommend checking out our full list for some ideas here: https://www.ruled.me/best-l…
I didn’t have all the spices called for in this recipe, so I substituted a healthy scoop of Garam Masala with the spices I did have. I also scored the chicken thighs with a knife and soaked them in brine for half an hour, then I threw the chicken in a gallon freezer bag and added the oil. After I thoroughly rubbed the oil in the chicken, I added the spices into the bag and rubbed them in for about a minute. I baked them in my toaster oven at around 410-430 degrees for 50 minutes. The end result was like an orgasm of the tastebuds!
Very happy that you were able to figure out some substitutions for the spices and loved them!
Very tasty and couldn’t be easier. Very popular in my house.