How many weeknight chicken dishes can one person have? If you’re asking us, the answer is “never enough.” And while baking up some chicken thighs in barbecue sauce is a basic enough go-to dinner plan, we’ve got something a little more special up our sleeves. This easy chicken bake involves whipping up your own white barbecue sauce that acts as both a marinade and the baking sauce. It couldn’t be simpler (you probably already have all the ingredients on hand) and the end result is the most moist and flavorful chicken you can imagine.

Most of us are accustomed to grabbing a bottle of our favorite barbecue sauce off the grocery store shelf, but creating your own is easy, especially when it comes to this white sauce version. It’s a quick mixture of mayo, vinegar, mustard, horseradish, and a couple of simple seasonings. It’s creamy and tangy, and it goes so well on so many things!

It adds an awful lot to this bake though, where it first acts as the marinade, and then as the actual sauce the chicken bakes in. It’s as simple as this: you mix the sauce ingredients together, nestle the chicken down into it and let it chill in the fridge for twenty minutes or so. During that time, the chicken absorbs so much of that wonderful flavor and the oil from the mayo ensures that the chicken stays nice and moist.

From there, the chicken (sauce and all!) can head straight into the oven to bake. It emerges tender and moist and absolutely perfect alongside some mashed potatoes. This sauce gives a serious leg up to simple chicken thighs, but we can promise that you’ll be using it on everything as soon as you try it. It’s that good. Enjoy!