Boy, have I been craving some good old crunchy chicken!Make it sticky and hot and we can't concentrate the whole week with slight frothing at the mouth with particularly intense day dreams.
Normally we are generally a plant based house, but when we do eat chicken, we tend to go for this Yogurt and herb grilled chicken that we tweak to our fancy...and while that is in itself ahhhmazing, I got it in my head that I want sticky, crunchy, BBQ chicken and nothing else...one track mind? Guilty!
Also, walking into Nakumatt for a jar of olives and stumbling upon my favourite sauce restocked cemented the deal faster than you can say 'Crunchy Hot Chicken'...
And now here I am, sharing one of my own favourite chicken recipe.
The trick with this chicken is patience. You need patience if you want some of this chicken.
Patience in every step to a satisfied palette and a warm full tummy.
I got the chicken I wanted to use from my momma's organic chicken coop cause that's how we roll around these parts. I wasn't expecting it to be this big either...because organic ANYTHING takes forever. But it was worth it. So worth it!
I got the chicken I wanted to use from my momma's organic chicken coop cause that's how we roll around these parts. I wasn't expecting it to be this big either...because organic ANYTHING takes forever. But it was worth it. So worth it!
I used a basic dry rub marinade and left it for a few hours in the refrigerator, and a mixture of hot sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and Worcestershire sauce to bast the chicken as it grilled.
The reason I love recipes like this is it gives you so much room for experimenting. I googled sticky and crunchy BBQ chicken and all that came up was chicken wings, and as much as I love chicken wings, I needed something for a whole chicken cause my cravings meant business!
I chose to go with this basting mixture for one reason and one reason alone...I had bought a Thai Chili sauce with Garlic, and my experience with anything Thai meant that the sauce was going to be a wonderful mix of sweet, tart, and hot..exactly what I needed. So basically, the soy, vinegar and Worcestershire was to enhance as much flavour as I could from this bottle of yummy goodness. And boy did the flavours pop! One bite and the party in my mouth became a rave. You know I'm not kidding because I.Don't.Kid.About.Food.
We accompanied this amazing chicken with some of this mashed potatoes, and we forgot about the blanched veggies when the chicken came out of the grill ;-)
Time: 1 hour, post marination
Yield: However number of people one chicken serves
Ingredients: Dry Rub:
-Chicken
-4 Cloves of garlic
-Salt
-Black pepper
-Pinch of Rosemary and Lemon Thyme.
Ingredients: Basting Liquid
-1/4 cup Hot sauce of your choice, I used Encona: Thai Chili Sauce with Garlic. (Encona is a favourite brand of hot sauce for me)
- 2 TBS soy sauce,
- 2 TBS balsamic vinegar
-2 TBS Worcestershire sauce
-salt to taste
Preparations.
Cut your chicken into whatever size you prefer, and set aside. In a mortar/grinder, mince together all the ingredients for the dry rub marinade and apply liberally to your chicken. Try and get some marinade beneath the chicken skin so that the actual chicken gets marinated, otherwise you will end up with a very bland chicken. Stick it in the fridge for however long you prefer. Minimum for me is four hours (4 hrs) up to eight (8hrs)
Set your grill to medium heat, around gas mark 4, or the equivalent to whatever equipment you will be using. It's adviseable to coat your grilling rack with oil, but again, that's a preference. I find chicken to be oily enough by itself, and mine has never stuck on the rack..
I tend to put my chicken on the grill right at the beginning to let the chicken warm up with the grill, so you can do that as well, or again, if you prefer it, wait until your grill is warm...this isn't like baking a cake, or grilling a steak, so you don't have to worry about 'jumping the gun'. let the chicken grill for fifteen minute, then turn and grill for fifteen minutes..don't worry if your chicken doesn't look cooked, it's not :-D
As you are waiting for the second half of the chicken, whisk together in a bowl, the basting ingredients. Remember I said that you can experiment with this, so adjust the amount to your liking. If you need more, then by all means go ahead.
Take the chicken out of the oven, and turn it back up, liberally bast/spread the hot sauce mixture all over the chicken. Return, grill for twenty minutes. Take it out, turn, and repeat on the other half...and return for another twenty minutes.
After the forty minutes are done, pick a piece of chicken that has bone in it and slice with a knife. If it doesn't look cooked ( if its pink) then return chicken for another ten minutes.
I also like the temperature of my chicken to go down with the cooling of the grill. So I flip it and let my grill cool. I find that this gives my chicken an extra crunch, and well, wasn't that the point of this all? ;-)
Serve as desired.
Time: 1 hour, post marination
Yield: However number of people one chicken serves
Ingredients: Dry Rub:-Chicken
-4 Cloves of garlic
-Salt
-Black pepper
-Pinch of Rosemary and Lemon Thyme.
Ingredients: Basting Liquid
-1/4 cup Hot sauce of your choice, I used Encona: Thai Chili Sauce with Garlic. (Encona is a favourite brand of hot sauce for me)
- 2 TBS soy sauce,
- 2 TBS balsamic vinegar
-2 TBS Worcestershire sauce
-salt to taste
Preparations.
Cut your chicken into whatever size you prefer, and set aside. In a mortar/grinder, mince together all the ingredients for the dry rub marinade and apply liberally to your chicken. Try and get some marinade beneath the chicken skin so that the actual chicken gets marinated, otherwise you will end up with a very bland chicken. Stick it in the fridge for however long you prefer. Minimum for me is four hours (4 hrs) up to eight (8hrs)
Set your grill to medium heat, around gas mark 4, or the equivalent to whatever equipment you will be using. It's adviseable to coat your grilling rack with oil, but again, that's a preference. I find chicken to be oily enough by itself, and mine has never stuck on the rack..
I tend to put my chicken on the grill right at the beginning to let the chicken warm up with the grill, so you can do that as well, or again, if you prefer it, wait until your grill is warm...this isn't like baking a cake, or grilling a steak, so you don't have to worry about 'jumping the gun'. let the chicken grill for fifteen minute, then turn and grill for fifteen minutes..don't worry if your chicken doesn't look cooked, it's not :-D
As you are waiting for the second half of the chicken, whisk together in a bowl, the basting ingredients. Remember I said that you can experiment with this, so adjust the amount to your liking. If you need more, then by all means go ahead.
Take the chicken out of the oven, and turn it back up, liberally bast/spread the hot sauce mixture all over the chicken. Return, grill for twenty minutes. Take it out, turn, and repeat on the other half...and return for another twenty minutes.After the forty minutes are done, pick a piece of chicken that has bone in it and slice with a knife. If it doesn't look cooked ( if its pink) then return chicken for another ten minutes.
I also like the temperature of my chicken to go down with the cooling of the grill. So I flip it and let my grill cool. I find that this gives my chicken an extra crunch, and well, wasn't that the point of this all? ;-)
Serve as desired.
Love me,
Lola
No comments:
Post a Comment