Huli Huli Chicken Thighs
The Weeknight Plate Lunch
This isn't spinning over a fifty-gallon oil drum in an Oahu parking lot, even though it was born in the fifties from a mother's teriyaki recipe and a massive roadside grill. Bringing the dish indoors demands flipping the thighs in a hot cast-iron skillet until the shoyu-sugar marinade caramelizes and the skin blisters, relying on the strict, mandatory use of canned pineapple juice to keep the marinade from turning your chicken into mush. Serve it with two scoops of white rice and mac salad, pressing the hot chicken against cold mayonnaise.
Before you start
Whisk the marinade ingredients together.
In a medium bowl, combine the canned pineapple juice, soy sauce, ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and Sriracha until the sugar completely dissolves.
Reserve half a cup of the clean marinade for basting.
Before doing anything else, pour out 1/2 cup of the marinade into a small container and refrigerate it. This is your uncontaminated basting glaze—if you touch raw chicken to the main batch, you cannot use it safely later.
Marinate the chicken thighs.
Place the chicken in a large zip-top bag or glass dish, pour the remaining marinade over the top, and toss to coat thoroughly. Refrigerate for 4 to 8 hours, making this perfect to prep before work.
Ingredients
- canned pineapple juice1 cup
- low-sodium soy sauce1/2 cup
- ketchup1/2 cup
- light brown sugar1/2 cup
- apple cider vinegar1/4 cup
- toasted sesame oil1 tbsp
- fresh ginger1 tbsp
- fresh garlic3 med clove
- Sriracha1/2 tsp
- boneless skinless chicken thighs2 1/2 lb
- vegetable oil1 tbsp
Method
- 01
Take the chill off the chicken.
Remove the chicken from the fridge about 20 minutes before you plan to cook to ensure it cooks evenly.
- 02
Prepare your grill or cooking surface.
Heat an outdoor grill to medium-high heat (375°F to 400°F) and thoroughly oil the grates with the vegetable oil to prevent sticking. If you're indoors, a cast-iron grill pan or your oven's broiler works fine.
- 03
Sear the chicken.
Remove the chicken from the marinade, letting the excess drip off, and discard the used marinade. Grill for 4 to 5 minutes on the first side until you get aggressive, dark grill marks.
- 04
Honor the name of the dish and turn the chicken.
"Huli" means turn. Flip the chicken over and aggressively brush a thick layer of your reserved clean glaze over the freshly cooked side.
- 05
Baste and flip continuously.
Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, flip again, and baste the new side. Because of the sugars in the marinade, the chicken will burn quickly if ignored; keep turning and basting every few minutes until a sticky, lacquered crust builds up and an instant-read thermometer hits 175°F.
- 06
Rest and serve.
Remove the chicken from the heat, tent loosely with foil, and let it rest for 5 minutes. Serve hot alongside two scoops of white rice and a scoop of creamy macaroni salad for the true plate lunch experience.
Notes
Never use fresh pineapple juice for the marinade.
Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, a potent enzyme that will rapidly degrade the chicken tissue and turn it into a mealy mush. The high heat of the commercial canning process deactivates this enzyme, making canned juice a culinary necessity here, not just a shortcut.
Replicate the island smoke with mesquite.
Traditional Huli Huli chicken is cooked over native Hawaiian kiawe wood coals. You can accurately replicate this on the mainland by tossing a handful of soaked mesquite wood chips (kiawe's botanical cousin) onto your coals or in a foil packet on your gas grill.
From Cook Hawaiian in America.