Valerie Bertinelli’s Sweet & Spicy Apricot BBQ Chicken Starts With a Jar of Jam

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Summer may be coming to a close, but we’re still craving the juicy fruit flavors of the season. But though we can’t get our favorite fresh fruits at peak ripeness for much longer, there’s a secret hack to getting that same just-picked flavor into your recipes all fall and winter long: jam. A quality jam retains and concentrates the flavor of the fruit, preserving it so you can whip out a jar whenever you need. It’s a hack Valerie Bertinelli, author of Valerie’s Home Cooking, uses with tasty results in her sweet and spicy apricot barbecue chicken recipe.

It’s easy enough to reach for a bottle of barbec‍ue sauce at dinner, but it only takes a little more time to whip up your own, and it’s so much tastier. Bertinelli starts her sauce by sweating some onions, garlic, and a Fresno chile (or jalapeño) in a saucepan, then adds a jar of apricot jam. It’s combined with orange juice, vinegar, ketchup, honey, and Worcestershire, to make for a sticky, sweet, tangy, and spicy barbecue sauce that turns a simple weeknight meal into something special.

Bertinelli uses bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for this recipe, but you can use the apricot barbecue sauce with pretty much any of your favorite meats. We think it would work particularly well with pork — there’s that old saying “pork loves sugar,” and we think some ribs glazed with a spicy apricot barbecue sauce sound like perfection, whether your grilling outside in July or making oven ribs in January.

Just remember, barbecue sauce has sugar in it, so it tends to burn fairly easily. That’s why Bertinelli roasts the chicken thighs first, then bastes them with the apricot barbecue sauce and caramelizes it under the broiler. You can repeat the glaze and broil step as many times as needed to build up a thicky, shiny layer of flavor on the chicken.

The end result of Bertinelli’s recipe is a weeknight barbecue chicken dish that has a homemade sauce to liven things up, with sweet and juicy flavor thanks to the apricot jam. The next time you find yourself feeling blue about the change of the seasons, try this sunny recipe from Valerie Bertinelli for a taste of summer.

Before you go, check out Ina Garten’s easy weeknight dinner recipes below:

Watch: We Tried Ina Garten’s Overnight Mac & Cheese & We Totally Get Why It Broke the Internet