Since I had so much peanut sauce leftover from making chicken satays, I thought that I would make another batch of satays. Originally I was thinking about going with pork. But on Saturday morning I was watching Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen, and he made beef satays on his Lodge Hibachi. So after seeing that episode, it sealed the deal for me to make beef satays with some of the leftover peanut sauce. Continue reading →

You know, I’ve made chicken satays once before, but that was many many years ago. And since I don’t have central air in my house, I’m looking to cook as much food outside as possible. So doing some grilling fits the bill.
I had two recipes on file for chicken satay, but I really don’t remember which one I used when I made this dish years ago. So I kind of combined parts of both recipes (here & here) and create a new recipe. My usual cooking notes are listed below, so lists get on to the ingredient list:

• 2 Chicken breasts and 2 chicken breast tenders (which were from a whole chicken that I de-boned myself)
• 1 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1 cup Vegetable Oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup toasted sesame oil
• 2 TB Fish Sauce
• 1 TB Hoisin Sauce
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 TB of fresh ginger, minced

Combine all the ingredients listed in a bowl ( minus the chicken) and whisk it all together. Personally I used my Braun stick blender to get it all mixed up. Then cut up the chicken so that it is in pieces about 1/2″ wide by 1/2” thick and 2” long. Take the chicken and skewer about two or three chicken pieces onto each bamboo skewer. Once all the chicken is skewered give it a pretty heavy coating of the peanut sauce, and let it marinade for about 24 hours in the fridge. You’ll have more then enough sauce to coat all the chicken skewers, plus 2 cups of leftover sauce.
Once the chicken is done marinating overnight, I cooked the satays on the Weber for about a minute or two a side, but basically until browned and firm to the touch.

And the results, pretty good if I do say so, but check out the side notes for what I would do differently next time. Enjoy.

Side notes:
1) Don’t bother using bamboo skewers. Sure they look cool, but stick with stainless steel skewers.
2) Needs more spice, since I barely tasted any of the red pepper flakes that I did add. So I’d probably pump it up to a full teaspoon the next time.
3) I’m also thinking about tweaking the liquid ingredients. Since I really don’t think that the sesame oil added anything extra, so I would just increase the vegetable oil to 1.5 cups.
4) Also I just happened to find out that fish sauce is totally awesome, so I would cut back on the soy sauce and increase the fish sauce, so that each was a 1/4 cup.
5) Have you noticed that there isn’t any salt in the recipe? It because the soy sauce and fish sauce have plenty of salt to begin with, so adding in some kosher salt doesn’t make any sense.
6) If you don’t want any leftover peanut sauce, just cut the sauce recipe in half.