For those of you expecting this recipe to be something like the picture above: a plain chicken breast that is grilled, doused with teriyaki sauce and topped with canned pineapple slices, please read about Sanford B. Dole. Putting a pineapple slice on something barely edible and calling it Hawaiian makes me want to barf. Anyways enough about my aversion to “pineapple = Hawaiian” food. On to the good stuff.
The thing with most grilled chicken is that it has to marinate for a while, preferably overnight and preferably in a zip-lock bag. Once the marinade has soaked in, the chicken always turns out moist and flavorful. I don’t know how many times I made this chicken but I never worry about it drying out. The batch that I whipped up for this past Thursday’s BBQ happened to taste especially good. I think it was because I used brown sugar instead of regular granulated sugar – sometimes being out of something in the kitchen leads to a good thing.
For this recipe I prefer to use thigh meat but really any part of the chicken will do. The recipe below should be enough to fill a one gallon zip-lock bag and feed about 6 – 8. If there is someone named Eric Robinson in the group you might want to make two bags. I usually buy the big family pack of chicken that has a dozen thighs in it. 12 chicken thighs fit nicely in a gallon bag.
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup brown sugar
- 2/3 Cup shoyu (otherwise know as soy sauce)
- 2/3 Cup water
- About a 3″ to 4″ piece of ginger, grated
- 6 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 Tbsp sesame oil
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 3 Tbsp sesame seeds
- 2 Tbsp crushed red pepper (for spicy version)
- 12 chicken thighs
In a very large bowl toss chicken thighs, sesame oil, black pepper, garlic, sesame seeds and optional red pepper. In another bowl mix shoyu, water and brown sugar. Next squeeze the grated ginger over the shoyu-suger mixture allowing the juice from the ginger to fall in the mixture. Give the mixture a quick stir. Place the chicken in a zip-lock bag (be sure to spoon up all the extra garlic and sesame seeds from the bowl). Place bay leaves in the bag and then fill it up with the marinade. Try to squeeze as much air out of the bag that you can before you seal it. Put the bag in a pan and place in the refrigerator over night. I feel that it helps if you turn the bag over roughly half way through the marinating process. If you’re like me and you typically grill in the evening then you can just turn the bag over in the morning. When you come home from whatever you’re doing that day just plop the thighs on the grill and cook until done. Best chicken ever… bra.
Aloha
