Looking for an easy, healthy, and delicious way to cook bone in chicken thighs for your weekly meal prep? My easy red curry chicken thigh recipe is perfect for just that. In fact, I can make it back to back and make different weeknight chicken dinners, and it never gets old.

Ever since, I joined local school as an educator, my weekdays are constantly in need of easy weeknight dinner recipes. I have to leave special curry recipes for the weekends, where I create some delicious rice and curry dinners that I can store or freeze ready to cook or ready to eat. On the other nights that I need to make dinner in minutes this easy oven baked chicken thigh, pulled form freezer pre-marinated comes to rescue.

Ingredients

Ready set meals do not need to be boring just because they are meal prep recipes. They can be as delicious and full of spark too. Add spices like ready-made red curry seasoning, to simple bone in chicken thighs it can transform a weeknight dinner in to a gourmet family meal.

Not a fan of frozen chicken? This recipe makes fresh chicken recipes even more flavorful. This recipe, is great not only for chicken thighs. It’s so easily adaptable to use for whole chicken, chicken breast, thighs, drumsticks. I am a huge fan of ready to cook prepackaged chicken thighs and whenever I see them in grocery store they are coming home with me. Each individual pack is just enough for a couple of meals for my family of four, already cleaned out, prepped, and waiting to be marinated. Another reason to love your local Costco!

Making red curry marinade for chicken thighs

Sri Lankan red curry is vibrant, aromatic, and perfect on its own. Having said that, I did make slight changes to original red curry paste for this version of oven baked chicken recipe. for once, I skipped adding tomatoes. I didn’t think the flavor of the tomatoes will complement other spices, in the mix. Further to that, I didn’t want too much acidity and juices from the tomatoes to effect the mouthfeel. I do love how vibrant the crimson hue of the finished chicken thighs on this bake, even without any tomato puree added in the marinade.

The red curry marinade I made for this easy chicken recipe is a pre-cooked marinade. It is cooked ever so slightly to bring out the best flavors can combine before they go in with fresh chicken thighs to flavor the dish.

Caramelized onions, date molasses, red wine, and hot Spanish paprika gives such a beautiful crimson hue that is going to be intensified in the oven while basting and make its own glaze. Less sharp but sweet and sour tamarind paste will deepen the hue while adding flavor. This combination of ingredients make the marinade full of flavors but not too overwhelming, and just adding pleasant spicy and aromatic flavors to overall oven baked chicken thigh dinner.

Where does the heat and kick come to the recipe? Thai hot green chilies are the main spicy hot ingredient in the marinade. You can use as many up to five, but any more than that you would be in trouble. Three Thai hot green peppers, ginger and black pepper offer some fresh flavored kick to it. I do love the heat in my recipes in cooler months. Especially for the prepackaged chicken thighs, adding fresh elements like green chili and lemongrass enhances the flavor.

Aromatic spices and elements are equally important to this recipe as well. Fennel, black cumin, anise, nutmeg, cardamom, and cloves are all sweet-smelling spices. I am taking a note from my own cooking blog here and using nothing but the sweet aromatics for this baked chicken thigh dish. I do not want to tackle any curry smells today and aiming to easy clean up after.

Note of caution while making the marinade

What aromatics have tendency to overpower the other flavors in oven baked chicken thigh and become unsavory in today’s marinade if you are not careful? Too much Black cumin, Cloves, and Nutmeg can become troublesome. You only need a couple of pinches of these powerful aromatics in the marinade to work their magic. Add too much, they will overpower all other flavors, as they are very potent. Stick to the amounts in the recipe and your chicken thighs will come out of the oven just right.

Once the marinade is made, making these chicken thighs is extremely easy. Slather the marinade over the chicken thighs, allow enough time to marinade and bake. It is that easy. Let the oven do the cooking for you.

Serving the oven baked chicken thighs

I like to serve mine with Lentil and buckwheat “rice”, with a Sri Lankan cucumber salad on the side. Chicken thighs made this way will go with any rice and curry or naan with another milder curry and salad pairing. With that let’s cook our baked chicken thighs!

Oven baked chicken thighs will be equally delicious over pasta as well. Enjoyed making this delicious oven baked chicken thighs recipe in any weeknight chicken dinner for your family?

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