Piri Piri Chicken

Build the Meal Around Piri Piri Chicken

• Chips and a garlic mayonnaise
• A cold Super Bock or a crisp white
• A green salad with tomato and onion

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Arroz de Tomate, Broa de Milho, Migas Portuguesas.

How to Cook Piri Piri Chicken

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1. Blend all the sauce ingredients except the bay leaves until smooth.

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2. Divide the sauce in half. Pour one half over the chicken in a dish, working it under the skin and into every crevice, and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.

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3. Simmer the other half with the bay leaves in a small pan for 12 minutes until slightly thickened. This is your basting and serving sauce.

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4. Take the chicken out an hour before cooking and pat the surface dry. Season with the flaky salt.

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5. Heat the oven to 200°C / 390°F, or prepare a barbecue for indirect grilling.

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6. Roast the chicken skin-side up on a rack over a tray for 30 minutes.

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7. Baste generously with the cooked sauce and roast 15 minutes more.

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8. Baste again and roast a final 10 to 15 minutes until the thickest part of the thigh reads 74°C / 165°F and the skin is charred at the edges.

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9. Rest 10 minutes, then joint and serve with the remaining cooked sauce, lemon wedges and chips.

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Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.

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Notes From the Method

Never baste with the marinade that touched raw chicken. Cook a separate batch for that.

Adjust the chillies to taste — ten is properly hot, five is approachable, twenty is a statement.

Finish under a hot grill for 3 minutes if you want more char on the skin.

If You're Missing Something

• Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
• Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.

Leftovers

Refrigerate cooked chicken up to 3 days. The sauce keeps 3 weeks refrigerated and is excellent on everything.

Questions and Answers

What's in a Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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