Glazed Chicken Breasts

Cooks Illustrated Science of Good Cooking again...

Recipe

1 1/2 c apple cider
1/3 c light corn syrup
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp vinegar
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 c flour
2 bone-in chicken breasts
1 shallot, minced
oil, salt & pepper

Whisk together the cider, corn syrup, honey, mustard, vinegar, red pepper, and a little salt and pepper.  Preheat the oven to 375 and heat a couple tbsps of oil in an oven-safe skillet.  Pat the chicken dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and coat the chicken in the flour.  Brown skin-side down for 8-14 minutes, flip and cook another 5 minutes.  Set the chicken aside and cook the shallots for a couple minutes, then add the glaze and simmer until thickened and reduced, about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and tilt the skillet, roll each piece of chicken to coat, and put skin-side down in the skillet.  Pop the skillet in the oven for 25-30 minutes, flipping the chicken halfway through.  When it's done, remove the chicken, heat the glaze for a few minutes to thicken again, and spoon over the chicken to serve.

Notes

There are a couple substitutions the cookbook recommends.  The recipe above is more or less the ones I chose - didn't have corn syrup so I just used extra honey.  It maybe kept the glaze from thickening a bit, but the end result did not suffer.  You should end up with plenty of glaze.  I sopped up the last dregs with a slice of bread.  Maybe all the concentrated sugar undermines the healthiness of the dish (and the steamed green beans), but I'm not complaining.