Australian · Chicken
Sticky Chicken
About this recipe
Australian cuisine is a fusion shaped by waves of immigration — Asian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern influences blended over a base of British comfort food, with seafood and grilling as the everyday traditions.
As a chicken dish, Sticky Chicken is forgiving enough to roast whole, braise in pieces, or quick-cook for a weeknight dinner — chicken accepts most techniques without losing its character.
Set your servings in the scaler above and every line of the recipe rewrites itself with smart fractions and unit promotion. Open Cook Mode to step through it hands-free with timers running.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
Translate this recipe
Reading in English
Listen to this recipe
No matching voice on this device
Method
- step 1
- Make 3 slashes on each of the drumsticks. Mix together the soy, honey, oil, tomato purée and mustard. Pour this mixture over the chicken and coat thoroughly. Leave to marinate for 30 mins at room temperature or overnight in the fridge. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6.
- step 2
- Tip the chicken into a shallow roasting tray and cook for 35 mins, turning occasionally, until the chicken is tender and glistening with the marinade.
Cooking notes
When scaling protein-led dishes, weigh the meat rather than counting pieces, and remember that the pan size limits how much you can sear at once.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Sticky Chicken
Sticky Chicken is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Sticky Chicken scales gracefully because chicken is forgiving — both the cooking method and the timing apply per piece rather than per total weight. The non-linear rule still applies to seasoning: at 2× volume use 1.5× the salt and spices, not full double, because flavour concentration intensifies as batch size grows.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Sticky Chicken
Two things home cooks ask about most when they're outside the recipe's exact assumptions: what swaps work for which ingredients, and how the dish behaves when you make it ahead. Both depend on what Sticky Chicken is doing structurally — here's the practical version.
Substitution ideas
Honey
Maple syrup substitutes 1:1 — slightly less sweet, similar viscosity, works in marinades and dressings. Agave nectar at 1:1 is sweeter and more neutral. For granulated sugar, use 1 cup sugar + 2 tbsp water per cup of honey (warm to dissolve before adding to the recipe).
For weight-based swaps and arbitrary quantities, the ingredient density converter and the cup-to-grams chart cover most pantry staples.
Make-ahead and storage
Sticky Chicken tolerates make-ahead better than most home cooks expect. Cooked chicken keeps 3-4 days refrigerated and freezes well for up to 3 months. Reheat in a low oven (around 300 °F / 150 °C) covered, with a splash of broth — microwave reheating dries out lean breast meat especially. If the sauce is dairy-based (cream, yogurt), warm gently over low heat and stir as it comes back together; high heat breaks the emulsion.
Recipe video
Sticky Chicken
Keep cooking
More chicken recipes
Cooking aids
Tools to use while you cook this.
Each opens in a new tab so the timer keeps running. The math is auditable on the guide page below each converter, with worked examples and where the numbers come from.
Volume
Tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ml, fluid ounces — every culinary volume unit, with US/metric/imperial cups handled distinctly.
OpenWeight
Grams, ounces, pounds, kilograms — exact for any ingredient, plus the volume-to-weight conversions for ~40 pantry staples.
OpenTemperature
Fahrenheit, Celsius, gas mark — translate any oven temperature, with notes on conventional vs convection.
OpenCooking time
The cube-root rule for scaling up, the differences between meat / cake / soup geometry, and sensible starting estimates.
OpenPan size
9-inch round vs 8-inch square vs 13×9. The math is surface area, not diameter — and the converter shows you both.
OpenLength
Inches and centimetres — for when a recipe says “cut into 1-inch pieces” and your ruler is metric.
OpenIngredient density
A cup of flour weighs 120 g; a cup of honey weighs 340. The full table of ~40 staples, with sources.
OpenOpen in main scaler
Edit the recipe text, scale by serving count, and copy the result. Same parser as the in-page scaler, more room to work.
OpenFrom the journal
Original essays on the small details.
The why behind the technique — original writing on the ingredient and equipment choices that separate a good cook from a frustrated one.
Reading a recipe like a chef
The 30-or-so recipe terms that show up most often, decoded
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Cooking for one — scaling principles
The math, the practical realities, and the recipes designed for one from the start
Read essayMay 4, 2026
How long do leftovers actually last?
Beyond the USDA's 3–4 days: the variables that actually determine the safe window
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Go deeper
Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
Each guide below is a real essay on the cuisine or the category — pillars, staples, techniques worth learning — paired with a curated grid of recipes filed under it.
Ready to cook?
Scale it to your table, then get into the kitchen.
Send this recipe to the main scaler for further editing, or jump straight into Cook Mode for a hands-free walk-through with timers running.