Chicken Satay

What to expect

Taste

Sweet and smoky first from the caramelised palm sugar on the outside of the meat, then earthy and slightly medicinal from the turmeric, then a savoury lemongrass and shallot base underneath. The sauce is a separate flavour rather than a continuation: sour from tamarind, sweet from palm sugar and kecap manis, salty, mildly hot, and fatty in a way roasted peanuts are. Together they read as sweet, sour and savoury in roughly equal weight, which is the balance the dish is aiming at.

Aroma

Lemongrass and burnt sugar over charcoal, and it is one of the more carrying smells in cooking. The turmeric contributes a warm, faintly dusty note. The sauce smells mostly of roasted peanut with a sharp tamarind edge behind it.

Texture

Two textures doing different things. The meat is springy, with crisp blackened edges and a slight resistance from the thigh. The sauce is thick, grainy and clinging, and the rubble of peanut in it is deliberate. Cucumber chunks and raw onion wedges are cold and watery and crunching against both.

Sound

The fat and sugar hitting the coals, which is the loudest and most useful cue in the whole cook: when the spitting picks up sharply the sugar is caramelising, and that is thirty seconds from burnt.

How the flavour moves

Char first, then sweetness, then the aromatic middle, and the finish belongs to whatever you dipped it in. Without the sauce the skewer alone finishes short and slightly dry. With it, the peanut and tamarind arrive last and lengthen everything, which is why the sauce is essential rather than an accompaniment.

Serve it

Hot from the grill against a room-temperature sauce and cold raw vegetables. Satay is meant to be eaten immediately and standing up; it loses its char texture within about five minutes on a plate.

Goes with

Steamed rice or the compressed rice cakes eaten with satay in Indonesia and Malaysia, cucumber, raw red onion, and something cold to drink. Beer or iced tea.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, but it wants attention at the grill because the sugar in the marinade is on the edge of burning throughout.

Cost

Cheap. Thighs, peanuts and store-cupboard aromatics.

Equipment

Bamboo skewers, and either a barbecue or a ridged griddle pan. A blender for both the marinade and the sauce.

When to make it

Any time there is a barbecue lit, and it works on a griddle pan indoors.

Best season

None, though it is a summer dish in practice because of the charcoal.

You know it is done when

Yellow-gold from the turmeric with black lacing along the edges and at the high points of the meat. Uniform brown means the heat was too low; uniform black means it sat still.

And it feels like

The meat should be springy and slightly chewy with crisp charred edges, not falling apart.

Food safety

74C/165F in the thickest strip. Discard any marinade left in the bowl rather than brushing it on at the end.

Where it goes wrong

• Putting peanut in the marinade, which burns and flattens everything.
• Bunching the meat on the skewer, so it is raw inside and black outside.
• Not soaking the skewers, so they burn through and drop into the coals.
• Cutting the chicken across the grain, so it falls apart on the skewer.
• Leaving the skewers still while the sugar caramelises, which takes about thirty seconds to go from lacquered to burnt.
• Making the sauce as thick as you want it, then finding it has set solid by the time it reaches the table.

If it does go wrong

Meat black outside and pink inside: the strips were bunched, or the heat was too fierce and too close. Sauce seized to a paste: it always thickens on cooling, so whisk in hot water off the heat. Sauce tastes flat: it needs tamarind, not salt. Skewers stuck to the griddle: the pan was not hot enough when they went on.

Making it ahead

Marinate overnight and make the sauce a day ahead. Both improve.

Keeping it

Two days in the fridge. The sauce keeps a week and thickens to a paste.

Reheating

Under a hot grill for two minutes a side. Microwaved satay is soft and sad.

Freezing

Marinated raw skewers freeze well for a month. The peanut sauce freezes and needs whisking with hot water on thawing.

Leftovers

Pulled off the skewer into a rice bowl, or into a baguette with cucumber and the sauce.

Scaling it

Doubles easily, and the grilling is the bottleneck rather than the prep.

Substitutions

Palm sugar can be soft brown sugar. Tamarind paste can be lime juice, though the sourness is brighter and less deep. Kecap manis can be approximated with soy sauce and an equal quantity of dark brown sugar melted together. Fresh turmeric, if you can get it, is better than ground and stains everything it touches.

Dietary swaps

Contains peanuts and soya, and usually cereals containing gluten via the kecap manis. Dairy free and egg free as written.

Shopping for it

Kecap manis and tamarind paste from an Asian grocer. Fresh turmeric and lemongrass are worth buying fresh if you can.

Keeping the cost down

Roasted unsalted peanuts from an Asian grocer cost a fraction of what the supermarket charges for the same thing in a smaller bag.

Nutrition

Lean meat and a very rich sauce; the peanut sauce carries most of the fat and calories.

Worth it?

Getting the peanut out of the marinade and into a bowl on the side is the single change that makes home satay taste like satay.

Where it comes from

Origin

Java, in Indonesia, and shared across Malaysia and Singapore.

Also called

Sate in Indonesian and Malay, spelled satay in English.

Said out loud

SAH-tay.

What the name means

Not settled. Derivations have been proposed from Tamil and from Minnan Chinese, among others, and none of them is established. Anyone giving a single confident etymology is choosing one of several.

History

Satay is generally understood to have developed on Java and spread outward through the archipelago, with the usual account crediting the influence of skewered grilled meats brought by Indian, Arab and other Muslim traders and adapted to local aromatics and palm sugar. It is a street food and a market food before it is a restaurant one, cooked over small charcoal braziers and sold by the skewer. Colonial ties carried it to the Netherlands, where satay sauce is now a domestic staple in its own right and is eaten on chips.

Why it matters

One of the dishes most often named as a national dish of Indonesia, and equally at home in Malaysia and Singapore. It is everyday food rather than special-occasion food, which is worth saying because dishes that travel well are often assumed to be festive at home.

When it is eaten

Street stalls, markets, family grills, and any gathering with charcoal.

The traditional way

Small skewers over a narrow charcoal brazier, fanned, turned constantly and basted. The narrow grill is deliberate: it keeps the exposed ends of the skewers away from the fire.

How it changed

Outside Southeast Asia the peanut sauce has migrated into the marinade, the meat has become breast, and the skewers have got much larger. All three make it worse and none of them are how it is cooked where it comes from.

Regional variations

There are dozens within Indonesia alone, differing by meat, marinade and sauce: some regional versions use a sweet soy dressing rather than peanut at all, and others use a completely different spice base. Malaysian satay is typically served with a thicker, sweeter peanut sauce alongside compressed rice cakes, cucumber and onion.

How this version differs

This is a domestic Javanese-style version cooked over a barbecue or a griddle pan rather than a brazier, which means slightly fewer, larger skewers than a street vendor would make.

Sources and credit

None. It is street food older than the recipes written about it.

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Categories

Courses & dish types

Main coursesDinner

Main ingredients

Chicken