Lemongrass Chicken

This is an easy and fast recipe that I used frequently for BBQ or grilling besides the usual satays for potlucks or gatherings. What I like about this recipe is that I can grill it in the oven even though it's more traditional to grill it on open charcoal burner. Living in apartment is not that easy so, oven is the only option but sometimes I tend to overdo it until the whole kitchen turned smoky just to get that chargrill effects :-D

You can serve sliced cucumber and satay sauce with this recipe if you want. Coleslaw tastes great too - kind of giving you crunchy, sweet and sour tastes with extra lemongrass flavour. It's also delicious with plain rice, coconut rice, Bryani Rice, fried rice and stir-fried noodles. It's one of those easy accompaniment recipes that won't go wrong and the usage of lemongrass sticks as pincers to hold the juicy chicken meats added extra topic to talk about in your gatherings :-)

*This is how the halved lemongrass looked like with the cooked meat in between.

Lemongrass Chicken

Serves 2-4

500 g Chicken breast meats

3 Tbl Honey

2 Tbl Light Soya Sauce

1 tsp Fresh Turmeric - grind/pound finely

Salt to taste

Enough Lemongrass for grilling chicken meat

Method:

1. Washed the chicken meat thoroughly and cut each piece into 2-3 portions. Pat the meat dry with kitchen paper. Set aside in a bowl.

2. In another small bowl, mix well the honey, light soya sauce and grounded fresh turmeric.

3. Pour the marinate into the prepared chicken meat and let the meat marinate for 1 hour.

4. Preparing the lemongrass sticks for grilling: Wash the lemongrass sticks. Split the lemongrass sticks into half about 1 inch from the root end (white part) but not all the way through the tip (green part). This is to make sure you have a space in the center of the lemongrass to hold (to pinch) pieces of meat and the other end to hold and turn the meat when grilling.

Note: If the lemongrass is larger and longer, you can add in extra meat instead of 1 piece per lemongrass stick.

5. Insert the marinated a piece meat (or more) between the halved lemongrass sticks.

6. Grill the meat until it's cooked. You can use the BBQ set to grill or in the oven at 200 ºC for 15-20 minutes or until it's cooked to your preference. Don't forget to turn on both sides (that's where the uncut portion of the lemongrass comes in handy).

Tip:

Sometimes, I don't use so much of lemongrass to hold pieces of meat for grilling. It could be expensive to buy and it may not be easily available in certain areas. What I did was cut 2-3 lemongrass sticks into halves all the way through and lightly crushed them. Mixed together with the chicken meat and marinate. If you want intense lemongrass flavour, marinate longer than 1 hour (I usually prepared it a day ahead) then you grill as usual. You can leave the crushed lemongrass sticks to grill together with the meat or use bamboo skewers to skew the pieces of meat before grilling.

If you have only dried lemongrass, I suggest that you mix into the marinate first. Let the dried lemongrass soak up some moisture before marinate the chicken meat. The flavour is less pronounce than fresh lemongrass, of course. If you can find fresh lemongrass, try to grow left overs in a pot. Let them grow some roots first in some clean water. Change the water every couple of days until they developed strong roots before planting them into ground or pots. Just beware that when lemongrass finds favourable condition to grow, they may outgrown other plants.

Enjoy!