Butter
Quite a lot of finely chopped fresh garlic
Italian style bread crumbs
Fresh grated asiago or parmesan cheese.
Take the skin off the thighs, and preferably use boneless as well, they just do better. Melt the butter in a biggish bowl in the microwave with the chopped garlic in. In a pie pan or similar shallow dish mix together the bread crumbs and grated cheese. You can add salt and pepper if you like. Dredge the thighs through the butter mixture then roll around in the crumb mixture, and place them in a baking pan–if you’re using boneless, tuck the thigh back into a nice tidy shape. Take the remaining crumb/cheese mixture and dump it into the remaining butter and mix it all up with your fingers, then scatter over the thighs in the pan. Bake at 375F for forty minutes or so, until the juice runs clear. Serve with rice.
Vampires will avoid you for days after this meal. It reheats super well for lunch the next day too.
Don’t have a suggestion, but chicken thighs are one of my favorite and insanely cheap foods. I usually just season and bake them or my wife makes some recipe that has 2 ingredients as far as I know - sriracha and butter.
I’ve been doing a bastardized version of this sheet-pan chicken lately. The heart of the recipe is the technique: throw some marinated chicken thighs (or drumsticks, or both. I just like thighs) on a sheet pan with some potatoes (or nothing, or squash, or whatever), cook for 45 minutes or so at 425 degrees.
The recipe I linked calls for arugula and a yogurt sauce; I’ve never done either because the days I’m making this I’m usually at the non-fancy grocers, and they have neither arugula or non-greek plain yogurt in anything other than huge containers. Regardless, the recipe is great without it, and you could really dress the chicken however you want (BBQ / oil & Italian herbs / chipotle / whatever you have lying around).
Put them on top of some sliced onions in a large roasting pan
Bake in the oven, uncovered for 25 minutes until the outside it crisp and brown (they’re not cooked through at this point though)
Take them out of the pan, then add in:
2 cups uncooked rice
Lots of diced vegetables - carrots, red pepper, mushrooms, etc
about a litre of good stock
herbs, saffron, salt
place the chicken pieces back on top and bake in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes - or until the rice has absorbed the stock and the chicken is cooked through.
The juices from the chicken contribute to the flavour of the rice - the steam from the rice cooks the chicken very nice and moist, and the chicken being on top means that the skin stays crispy.
Chicken is amazingly versatile. I start with sauteed onions and a poblano pepper, add chicken and water, simmer covered until the chicken falls off the bone. Discard he bones and use the sauce to cover anything appropriate. Skimp as much as you want, one thigh is plenty for two servings, the chicken here is basically a condiment. Use pracically any leftover vegetables as filler.
Each variation is different. It can be with paprika, for Hungarian noodles. It can be with raisins and coconut for curry. It can be with chocolate, banana and peanut for Ethiopian wat. It can be with okra for gumbo.
Just serve it over the appropriate starch base to conform with the ethnicity of the dish. Rice, noodles, potato, whatever.
Skin them. Use the skin to make gribenes or something. Slice up some onions and some peppers, hot or sweet as you prefer. Season the thighs with salt and black pepper and some smoked paprika if you have any. Wrap up little aluminum foil parcels consisting of a thigh and some peppers n’ onions. Cook over medium indirect heat on a closed grill, if you can, or bake them in the oven at 425 for an hourish. The meat should be fall apart tender when they are done. I serve white flour tortillas with mine. Rice works too. Some raw tomato and cucumbers on the side is nice.