Good day all my Hive buddies and fellow Food Fanatics! I am Zak Ludick and I am writing to you from the tip of Africa, Cape Town!
Last time I did a chicken like this, I braaied the chicken over a fire after a slow pre-cook in the oven to let the marinade seep in! Today I am doing the chicken quite a bit faster in the oven, but also it was not such a nice night outside and we did not quite have the time to wait for a wood fire to burn down.
So let's get into this recipe and preparation!
Once again I am making a Sticky Chicken sauce. I did not have a good amount of Peach Chutney available, but I do have good old Braai Sauce. This is like a BBQ-esque flavour. This time around I had the proper brown sugar as last time I only had white sugar on hand.
I start with some Mixed Herbs and Six gun Grille spice.
And added all the Peach Chutney I could.
I added a generous helping of grushed chunky garlic bits.
And that braai spice!
Mix that all together and gauge the consistency of the marinade sauce. Here is where the magic happens!
The sugar has two jobs: Make it sticky caramel and make the marinade less moist. You do not want to have your marinade become too watery and just make your chicken float in it.
Instead we want the falvour ro go into the meat and whatever stays on the top needs to brown, caramalize and crisp out.
I had a back of cheese sausage in the fridge that needed to be eaten so I simply stuck this into the bottom of the bowl.
The chicken was stacked on top of this. As always, you do not want no space or too much space, the placing has to be just right!
Over all of this the marinade gets put. I start by putting a large dollop of sticky marinade on each chicken thigh and then, after spreading it out and smoothing it, I add more and more until all the surfaces of the chicken are covered.
This then needs to go into a preheated overn and comes out like this:
So the tops are doing exactly what I wanted, making dark, spiced crusts. If I had more time (next time) I would actually slow cook the chicken with light marinade and then add the sticky marinade on top for the final cook without needing to turn the chicken pieces around and then get a permanent sticky sweet crust that bonds with the skin.
I did not have the time however, so I have to flip the pieces to ensure an even cook throughout the chicken. Chicken is not something you can cook rare!
After a couple flips and turns this happened. So it no longer had the crust of spicy topping, but what it did have is this golden glazing of the chicken marinade. Delicious!
The Final Plating!
I served this chicken up with the sausage and some home-cut potato fries. Once they were all done and served, the family enjoyed the glorious chicken and watched a movie together!
Until next time...
Cheers!
@zakludick
