Chicken · Dinner · Indonesian

Chicken Skewers with Peanut Sauce

Ken

Ingredients

  • 1lb chicken breast cut into cubes

Marinade:

  • Juice from 1 lime
  • 1-2 tsp brown sugar
  • Pepper
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1-2tsp chili powder
  • 2-3 tsp minced garlic
  • 1-2 tsp onion powder

 

Peanut sauce:

  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 tsp dried shrimp paste
  • 3 red bird’s eye or Thai chilis
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup peanut butter
  • 1 Tbsp tamarind
  • 1/4 cup hot water
  • 1/2 cup water

Instructions

  1. Combine marinade ingredients. Marinade chicken for 90min.
  2. Add salt, shrimp paste, chilis, brown sugar, and peanut butter to food processor and process until smooth.
  3. Mix tamarind in the 1/4 cup hot water and add to sauce.
  4. Add 1/2 cup of water and mix well.
  5. Soak skewers in water and add chicken.
  6. Right before grilling, glaze in peanut sauce.
  7. Grill until cooked through.

Notes from Rachael:

In case you want more peanut sauce this is the recipe that I based mine off of. I pretty much followed the recipe but based of some research I used brown sugar to taste instead of the 1/4 cup palm sugar, peanut butter instead of grinding my own peanuts, a bit of chili powder instead of red eye or Thai chilies (I don’t think the chili powder really added anything so you could probably just skip it), and 1tsp of shrimp paste instead of 2 tsp dried shrimp powder because the paste was cheaper and in a smaller bottle.
If I were to do the recipe again I think I would try to get the shrimp powder instead since the paste was so stinky and strong. I think the shrimp powder is more versatile too. Or maybe substitute with fish sauce. I’ve also seen people use coconut milk instead of water to dilute the peanut butter. I think this might help it taste less like just watered down peanut butter. I’m just not sure what I would do with the rest of the can of coconut milk. I think I would also try to get more tamarind into the sauce (maybe soak more tamarind in the same amount of water to make it more concentrated).

Source: Rachael Chung and maangchi.com