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!
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This is a popular idea here in South AFrica too, John.
It’s never been a thing in the US, but since we consume SO MUCH of the drink why not cook with it? Thanks for the comment!
VEry interesting! Italians use mostly wine and herbs for flavoring poultry, so this kind of glazing is totally new to me!
Yes, I can imagine that glazing isn’t used much, but why would you when you have so much natural goodness to cook with – thanks for the comment as always!
Haven’t seen those crisps here yet but I am sure my grandson will tell me when they arrive here…I have seen a few recipes using Pepsi but not tried it yet…Your drumsticks look tasty and I am sure the ginger and mirin dumbed down the sweetness 🙂 x
It did a lot, just a hint of cola flavor,w which I liked!
These look absolutely delicious!
They were! Not really sweet as much as a hint of cola goodness, probably less fattening than many BBQ sauces!
And many bbq sauces do have quite a fair amount of sugar in them.
Sounds good. I’ve cooked a ham in cola, which is good and not sweet.
That sounds great!
It is. We have it at Christmas because we don’t care for turkey.Maybe I should cook the turkey in cola?
a cola glaze might in fact be good, since I do a bacon-wrapped maple glazed Turkey and it’s almost the same! Now I have to try that!
Thinking about it though, we happily eat prawn cocktail flavour… so maybe I would try them.
Yes, those actually sound good!
Hmm think I would try the Pepsi chicken but the crisps sound awful.
Yes but wait until I share the ones I have and will be doing a taste test for – a bit mind-blowing!
That sounds like it would definitely work for me, John. My wife wouldn’t like that sweetness though, so maybe I will just make them for myself one day. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
Pete, the ginger and soy really cut the “sweetness”, but I agree they are more for me than for my wife as well!