Chicken on a stick. Glorified. Two sauces to dip them in. Nom nom nommmmmm.....
This weekend we had our very good friends over for dinner, Big (sorority sister....yeah, her real name is Amanda....) her hubby Forrest. They have a precious little family. Clyde and I were very excited to have adults over and cook them dinner and show them our cute cottage and crank up the grill and take them to a local brewery and have yummy beer. I think they were just excited to have adult time away from their beautiful daughter - so we decided the double date needed to be EPIC.
We made a rigorous house cleaning schedule, one room clean a night! Tidy up! Be adult like and hospitable and gracious hosts! Clyde is definitely the better cleaner of the two of us, and I'm secretly very thankful for that. As usual, however, my job was to come up with the meal. I thought and brainstormed all week - I knew we wanted to grill, and then I remembered...
Chicken satay. One of my favorite things ever.
Clyde was terrified. I think he was tramatized by labor intensive memories of skewering hundreds of chicken tenders in a cold marinade for various large social events throughout his childhood. My father-in-law, Harky, has made it at a few parties and it's always been one of my favorites, and something I thought was a super special treat.
I was confident. This wasn't a party, it was 4 people! I was ready to tackle it.
And it was AWESOME.
I sort of made up my own version of the marinade and the two dips my father-in-law usually serves with this. I see version of this peanut sauce a lot online, but I haven't come across the second, the fire and ice sauce. Both are wonderful with the chicken. Forrest isn't even a fan of yogurt, but commented that he would "take this sauce on a date and ask it to come up for a cup of coffee."**
**He actually said this in a more vulgar fashion.
Here is how I made the chicken satay --- definitely requires some prep work in the morning, but then when you're ready to grill its all ready to go! Especially if you assign the hubbies the very important duty of skewering the chicken. We also grilled up some peppers and zucchini in a simpler marinade... also for dipping in the sauces :) Surprisingly, I had LOTS of these ingredients on hand already! So it's relatively cheap. And I'll go out on a limb and claim it's sort of healthy.
Chicken Satay Marinade (for about 25 chicken tenders)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp white wine vinegar (or whatever you have, like citrus juice,, something acidic)
1/3 cup of coconut milk, unsweetened
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp tumeric (new ingredient i bought, yummy!)
2 tsp ground ginger
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
25 bamboo skewers, soaked about 30 mins before you skewer the chicken
All you have to do is whisk these ingredients together. Take a little taste and add more of what you like. The sauces have lots of flavor so make sure it isn't very spicy or anything. I put all of the chicken tenders in a big gallon ziplock bag and dump the marinade in, close the bag, shake it up, stick in the fridge. Ours marinated for a few hours, but you could get away with letting it sit for an hour or two.
You can also go ahead and put your veggies in a second bag and marinade these too.... we did peppers and zucchini. I marinade these with vegetable oil, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, dried herb of choice, and minced garlic.
You an ALSO make the two sauces ahead of time! Here is how I made them.
Thai Peanut Sauce (in the orange bowl)
3 tbsp creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk (more to be creamier)
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of a fresh lime
Bunch of cilantro, chopped
Dash of sriracha, to taste **
Salt and pepper to taste
Whisk it all together, taste, adjust, done! **I made this sauce milder because the next one packs a LOT of heat!!
Fire and Ice Sauce (in the blue bowl)
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup greek yogurt
1 jalapeno pepper, minced **
Bunch of cilantro, chopped
Bunch of fresh mint, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Juice of a fresh lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Again, just whisk them together, taste, and adjust. **Seriously, taste. My beef with jalapenos is that they are all different spice levels. When I made this batch the jalapeno was SUPER spicy, so I added even more yogurt to tone it down.
Now you did all the work before your friends come over! Have your grill master (if that you, you are awesome) fire up the grill and cook the chicken satay about five minutes on each side.... medium high heat. Grill your veggies, serve with the sauces, DONE.
The chicken on the skewers! We made Forrest and Clyde do that part.
The chicken on our charcoal grill! Darcy is investigating....
We had so much fun and it was so delicious. Big had hers with a nice glass of reisling, and the boys and I drank a hoppy IPA. Clyde served up homemade strawberry buttermilk ice cream for dessert....maybe he'll do a cameo blog post about that, so delicious.
Happy Memorial Day everyone! Hope you all enjoy grilling and thanking our troops! I'll leave you with my favorite picture of the weekend.... baby Reagan meeting Mr. Darcy yesterday morning :) So sweet!!
