Sunday 'Roast' of Chicken Satay


As my cousin was going away to college, my aunt decided to cook as many of his favourite Asian foods and one of them was Satay. It's essentially grilled skewered meat but what makes it special are 2 things - the seasoning of the meat and the accompanying peanut sauce!

My aunt's peanut sauce doesn't look like the one you'd get in Singapore and taste-wise, it was slightly different mainly due to the fact that she can't get all the same ingredients in Wisconsin. However, as long as there's peanut butter in it, it's pretty legit!

My aunt, the satay woman

My aunt and I waiting for those satays to be done

On the grill
My aunt used a recipe from an old Indonesian cookbook that she has. I'm not going to repeat the recipe because I reckon that you can easily find it online nowadays. What is more important is really the heat from the charcoal. You need to ensure that it's constant and that you're constantly watching the fire. A lot of satay stalls in Singapore will add a small piece of fat between the meat on the skewer and when the fat drips into the charcoal, you'll normally get licking flames. For the purposes of home barbecues, I highly recommend NOT to do that. Just stick to breast meat.

Tada! These sticks of chicken were SOOO good! We washed them down with some Blue Moon beer and as mentioned previously, it really went well with the Chai Spiced Ale. When I posted all these photos onto Instagram, one of my followers said that I made her crave satay and she had it for dinner that night! LOL.

As my aunt used chicken breast meat, it really is a lot healthier than those sold in hawker centres. However, you will need to marinate the meat for a couple of hours and there is quite a bit of chopping required for the spices and herbs. Think finely chopped. I guess if you're lazy like me, you'll whip out your blender. Anyway, satay is readily available in Singapore but if you're living overseas, homemade satay is actually not that difficult to make!

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