Asian Chicken Skewers with Peanut Sauce

Collaboration with Sasha's Fine Food
Dish 1 - Honey mustard rosemary roasted chicken


A few days ago, I used the chicken dark meat from the free-range, hormones-free chicken provided by Sasha's Fine Food to cook a casserole dish. My family enjoyed the dish very much as the texture of the chicken was succulent and the chicken flesh was sweet and juicy.

Now my family isn't really fond of chicken breast meat, since most of the time the texture of breast meat is coarse and dry; so usually I'm the one eating it. My usual method of cooking breast meat is either pan-frying or air-frying with salt, black pepper and some herbs and eat it with salad. Or boil, shred and make it into chicken mayo for sandwich or salad.

This time I decided to try something a little special so that I could entice the family to eat chicken breast meat; that is to make a simplified version of satay and eat it with a peanut sauce dip.

Satay or sate is skewered meats (whether chicken, pork, beef, mutton or even intestines) marinated with various spices and sauces and typically grilled over charcoal fire and enjoyed with a spicy peanut sauce with ketaput (rice dumpling), cucumbers and onions. It is a very popular dish here in Singapore, we can easily find at least one satay stall at local hawker centres. As true blue Singaporeans, it is also a must-have dish for our BBQ gatherings and we would order raw satay from hawker stalls or BBQ specialty shops and grill it ourselves. Sate is said to have originated from Indonesia, and these days we can find similar and varied renditions in most South East Asian countries.

Anyways, I shouldn't call my version Satay as I'm not using the typical spices and sauces, rather it's a cheat version using the available sauces I have at home. Likewise, the peanut sauce is also a shortcut one using what I have in my pantry. So I would just call it Asian Chicken Skewers since the ingredients used to marinate the chicken breast are commonly found in Asian markets.

The chicken breast meat is first cut into bite-size pieces, marinated with the various sauces preferable overnight and then grill over a grill pan till golden brown and slightly charred. For the peanut sauce dip, simply combine all the sauces and cook till well-blended. That's it.

I served the dish with some Indonesian fried rice and quick cucumber and carrot pickles to make it a complete meal.

Asian Chicken Skewers
(makes 8 skewers)

• 200g chicken breast meat (extracted from one chicken)
• 2 tsp kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
• 1.5 tsp sriracha hot sauce
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 clove garlic, grated
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 8 pieces bamboo skewers, pre-soaked

1. Cut the chicken breast meat into bite-size pieces.
2. Combine all the sauces, ginger and garlic and mix till well-blended.
3. Add the chicken pieces and marinate overnight.
4. The next day, thread the chicken pieces onto the bamboo skewers.
5. Heat up a grill pan, brush the pan with oil and grill the skewered chickens on both sides till golden brown and slightly charred. 
6. Best served hot with peanut sauce.

Peanut sauce

• 1/3 cup chicken broth
• 2 tbsp peanut butter
• 1 tbsp kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
• 1 tbsp gula melaka (coconut palm sugar)
• 2 tsp coconut milk
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp sriracha sauce
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 cloves garlic, grated
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 3 tbsp raw peanut, toasted and finely chopped

1. In a small cooking pot, combine all the ingredients except lime juice and peanut. 
2. Bring the mixture to boil and cook till gula melaka is melted.
3. Add lime juice and adjust taste accordingly (add more sriracha sauce for spiciness).
4. Stir in the fine chopped peanut and mix till blended.
5. Sauce is ready to be enjoyed with the chicken skewers.

I love how the chicken skewers turned out! The chicken breast meat itself has a mild sweet, salty and spicy taste due to the marinate, it's actually yummy to eat on its own. But with the peanut sauce, it's even better! Love the cheatone peanut sauce, it's creamy, sweet, savoury with a tad of spiciness and tang, goes perfectly with the chicken skewers.

This dish is a keeper, and I think I'm going to try concocting the marinate and dip sauce with other similar ones next time!

For recipes for the fried rice and pickles, please go to: http://dreamersloft.blogspot.sg/2014/03/nasi-goreng-with-achar-indonesian-fried.html

Stay tune as I continue cooking dishes with the pork slices, salmon pieces and cod fillet from Sasha's Fine Food.

Sasha's Fine Food is an online F&B company that sourced ethically produced goods with preference to free-range, organic and/or fair trade food and drinks, and at the same time avoiding foods with unacceptable or unhealthy addictive. There's a wide variety of produce available in the webstore, from meat and fish to dry goods and groceries, dairy to beverages.