Rooster Satay Recipe

Once I was a child, satay—smoky, juicy, savory grilled meat on bamboo skewers—was an everyday function at my household’s barbecues. My mum all the time made two varieties: sate ayam (rooster satay) and sate babi (pork satay). She served the skewers with peanut sauce, sambal kecap (candy soy sauce with chopped chicken’s eye chiles and shallots), compressed rice desserts referred to as lontong, and uncooked shallots and cucumbers. After devouring the grilled meat, I’d use the skewer to pierce bits of lontong and shallots, popping the items into my mouth after a fast dip in peanut sauce.

Satay is certainly one of Indonesia’s most beloved dishes, and maybe one of the recognizable, too. Although the dish is loved in different components of Southeast Asia, together with Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, many students consider it originated on Madura, an Indonesian island off the Java coast someday in the course of the fifteenth century. Writing about Indonesian meals and identification within the Routledge Handbook of Meals and Asia, Dr. Christina Nope-Williams notes that satay could be traced again to kebabs launched by Arab Muslim retailers, which then unfold to different components of the area. 

At this time, you’ll discover quite a few styles of satay made with rooster, beef, lamb, pork, rabbit, and even goat testicles, amongst many different meats and proteins. Although my favourite is satay babi, rooster is arguably the preferred in Indonesia and world wide. 

Within the West, satay is obtainable at many Southeast Asian eating places, and lots of may consider it as a restaurant dish. However when you’ve got a set of skewers and a grill, satay is definitely fairly straightforward to make at dwelling—and with a number of strategies I’ve picked up from my household, chances are you’ll even be capable of make satay that’s pretty much as good as my mom’s.

Marinate Your Satay

Although my mom all the time makes her marinade shortly earlier than grilling, I desire getting ready it nicely prematurely so I can marinate the rooster, giving it extra time to completely season the meat. As fellow Severe Eats contributor Tim Chin discovered, marinating your rooster for at the very least an hour helps to boost browning and ends in juicier, extra tender meat that’s additionally extra flavorful. I like to recommend marinating for at the very least an hour, however eight hours is finest if you happen to can spare the time.

Historically, satay is marinated as soon as skewered: You thread the meat onto the sticks, then flip-flop the uncooked skewered meat within the marinade, a way utilized by abang abang sate—satay avenue distributors who plied the Jakarta streets of my mum’s youth. Although it’s a technique my mom swears by, I desire to marinate the chopped rooster in a bowl earlier than skewering. Not solely do I discover this to be a more practical means of evenly coating the rooster, nevertheless it additionally means I don’t should make room in my fridge for 30 sticks of satay.

Use Darkish Meat

For satay that stays juicy even after grilling, it’s finest to make use of darkish meat. In contrast to chicken, which dries out rapidly, darkish meat has connective tissue and extra fats that makes it a extra forgiving lower, permitting you to provide the meat a pleasant char for additional taste with out sacrificing texture. Boneless, skinless rooster thighs are my most popular lower for satay—they’re simply as straightforward to work with as rooster breasts, however are way more tender and flavorful.

Skewer Your Satay Appropriately

Earlier than bamboo skewers have been widespread, sticks have been usually common from the spines of coconut leaves referred to as lidi. Although most components of Indonesia use bamboo skewers right now, cooks within the Javanese metropolis of Yogyakarta usually use steel skewers constituted of bicycle spokes to string items of goat or mutton for sate klatak. (Bamboo skewers can simply be present in most grocery shops, nevertheless it’s price investing in a set of reusable steel skewers if you happen to plan on making satay recurrently.) 

Past the fabric of your skewers, how you narrow the meat issues, too. Some individuals wish to slice the meat lengthwise into longer strips, whereas others, like my household, desire cubed chunks of meat. Utilizing strips of meat can pace up the cooking time, but in addition will increase the chance of it overcooking. Chopping your rooster into chunks means you possibly can pack it onto the skewer tightly and, as Kenji famous in his Thai-inspired satay recipe, “reduces the ratio of floor space to quantity,” permitting you to adequately brown the meat whereas additionally protecting the inside of the rooster moist. 

As soon as the rooster is marinated, I thread the meat onto the skewers rigorously. It’s a process I’ve been perfecting since I used to be 12, when my mum put me in control of assembling all of the satay for our barbecues. After all of the hours spent skewering meat, I can virtually do it with my eyes closed. I all the time weave every rooster piece onto the stick longways, making an attempt to catch as a lot meat as attainable. This discourages floppy items of meat and ensures that as a lot floor is uncovered as attainable. Push the items shut collectively, protecting the bamboo tip, in order that the skewer doesn’t burn.

The best way to Set Up Your Grill for Satay

For that crisp, caramelized exterior, satay is usually grilled instantly over an open hearth (no grill grates!), usually with coconut husks instead gas supply. Although you possibly can use a traditional grill setup, it actually isn’t preferrred. As former Severe Eats editor Sasha Marx wrote in his information to setting up a grill for skewers, satay advantages from being nearer to coals for larger warmth so that you get a very good char with out overcooking the inside of the skinny items of meat. “Cooked on a extra commonplace charcoal grill, with better distance between coals and meals, the skewers’ exteriors find yourself dried-out and leathery slightly than charred and juicy,” he notes. “And the spread-out coals, coupled with an extended cooking time, can simply burn the uncovered surfaces of wood skewers.”

The best answer is to make use of a coal-fired hibachi or konro grill. One other methodology, if you happen to’re utilizing a kettle grill, is to switch your present grill arrange with some foil and some bricks.

1. Wrap 4 bricks in aluminum foil.
2. Place a number of items of scrunched up foil on the backside of your grill. Construct two parallel partitions with the bricks, set three-quarters of a skewer’s size aside. 
3. Pour lit coals into the tunnel between the bricks to create an space over which to cook dinner your skewers.

And if all you will have is a gas-fired grill, your satay will nonetheless be tasty—you simply gained’t get the identical gosong (charred) taste. (You may all the time run a blow torch over your completed skewers to provide it that smoky taste—simply be conscious of security when doing so.)

The best way to Serve Satay

Though peanut sauce is the preferred dipping sauce for satay within the West, there are numerous different condiments and dishes to serve with it. When you’ve got goat satay (sate kambing), the peanut sauce on the aspect could also be flavored with petis (black shrimp paste) which provides a salty-sweet trace of umami. Sate klatak, skewers of goat meat, are normally accompanied by gulai, a wealthy soup spiced with aromatics like lemongrass, cloves, cumin, and coriander. Sate Padang, beef satay from its namesake metropolis in Sumatra, comes with a thick yellow sauce flavored with turmeric, coriander, galangal, and cumin, amongst different spices. And sate taichan, rooster breast marinated with garlic and recent lime juice, is loved with a easy sambal and extra lime juice. Although these are all scrumptious choices, peanut sauce—or sambal kacang—is among the many best and most accessible for many dwelling cooks within the West.

Nonetheless, you possibly can take the effort and time to make an outstanding peanut sauce that outshines the ready-made stuff in shops. There was a time in my life once I’d take some time to fry red-skinned peanuts in a wok and grind them to make sambal kacang, which is what my mom did once I was rising up. These days, she unashamedly begins with store-bought chunky peanut butter.

I settled on center floor for this recipe, and use store-bought unsalted, roasted peanuts that I grind to a paste with a meals processor. To streamline issues, you can also make the peanut sauce prematurely. I personally advocate all the time protecting a jar readily available—for all of the occasions a satay craving hits; and when you understand how straightforward and versatile peanut sauce is (it’s nice for different preparations too!), I think you’ll wish to make it on a regular basis.