Anne BralyI’ve had a bottle of cinnamon whiskey in my collection of whiskeys for years. I don’t know how I ended up with it. Maybe I got it as a novelty item for a party, or perhaps someone brought it and left it. Nevertheless, it’s been in the house for several years and only recently made a move from the downstairs bar into the upstairs kitchen. I finally found a recipe in which I can use it: Cinnamon Whiskey Chicken.
If you’re tired of the same skillet chicken dinners week after week, this recipe knocks the socks off of others. It brings a chicken breast to life with a zesty, spicy kick of cinnamon whiskey married with sriracha sauce and a touch of honey for sweetness.
Had I been making this dish for myself I would have used two full tablespoons of sriracha sauce. But in making it for my tender-palated family, I cut down on the amount of the spicy sriracha. When blended with the other sauce ingredients – honey, soy sauce and lime juice – it was perfect – slightly sweet, slightly spicy. It’s got everything you want in a sauce to rev up the flavor of chicken
I served this with sticky rice, so I doubled the amount of ingredients for the sauce so that I could spoon some of it over the rice. Since the sauce had an Asian flair, I felt that sticky rice was the perfect side dish, along with a platter of egg rolls from my nearest Chinese restaurant.
As most seasoned cooks know, the alcohol burns off as it cooks, so if you’re a teetotaler, no worries. This whiskey was made for eating.