Hey guys so you've been asking for more simple chicken recipes in barbecue season, so I've got a
recipe here where we're going to look at the rub, we're going to look at the glaze, we're going to
look at how to cook it and control the temperature of the barbecue and here is beautiful simple
barbecue chicken thighs and legs. Right let's get cooking. Now, I'm here at my London HQ where I do
all of my recipe testing in the backyard so let's get this lit up I've lit the barbecue about 40
minutes ago so it's settling nicely. Let's talk about spice rubs. And I kind of want to show you
some of these sort of shop bought rubs right, you can go to any supermarket in any country and you
can get all kinds of things from curry powders, that's a blend, ras el hanout which is a beautiful
kind of North African expression of spices and seeds and nice things. We've got Chinese
five-spice it could be Thai seven-spice you know, you've got the beautiful jerk seasoning here,
there's loads of stuff that's been done and dusted for you and it can make it really easy for you but
I just want to kind of put this away because these are very convenient I've got no issues with it at
all I use them often myself, but just making your own spice rubs why would you do it? So look the
reason you would do it is because you can control the spices. If you like something more you can
push it, if you don't like a certain spice you can pull it back. You can also have secret ingredients
so you have your own kind of combo that you can be really proud of. But let me kind of get you
into the spirit of it. Here I've got a rub that I use a lot right we've got fennel seeds here,
one teaspoon, smoked paprika here, one teaspoon, I've got some lovely dried oregano, guess what?
One teaspoon. I've got some cumin seeds here, one teaspoon, black pepper, one teaspoon, and then sea
salt but not ordinary sea salt this is actually smoked sea salt that you can buy but you could
use any sea salt, one teaspoon. In the middle I've got two little cloves and I find that's
a really beautiful fragrant layered rub that you can do for many many flavoured grilled meats that
are being slow cooked, absolutely delicious. So you can add to that, you can add herbs,
you can add garlic, little orange or lemon zest, you can add different spices, so fill your boots
use your imagination use your passion. But what I'm going to do is bring this together now you
could use a little coffee grinder no trouble at all. I'm literally going to put this all into
my pestle and mortar here which is the old school way to do it. And what we want to do is use those
spices to create a nice little dust a nice little texture that will stick to your meat now obviously
we're doing chicken but it could be pork, lamb, goat, whatever you want to do no trouble at
all. So I'm just going to grind like this first just to kind of mix it and see what's going on.
Just start to grind it like this, then start using little tapping actions just to crush up
those fennel seeds. For me the spice shelf is like one of the best bits of the kitchen. Flavour-wise,
nutritionally it's incredible. You can see how the texture has completely changed look at that,
really really nice. So you can go finer if you want but that most importantly will stick to
the chicken. What I can do is just rub that onto the chicken just like that, very very nice. Or,
I want to show you how easy it is to go from a rub whether it's this stuff here or the homemade stuff
here, to a marinade. The only thing you need to do to turn this into a marinade is add two things:
olive oil, and acid, whether it's lemon or vinegar okay. And we've immediately gone from
a lovely spice rub to a spiced marinade. This is now a marinade and I'm going to pour this over the
chicken just like that. It smells incredible. And then we just sort of move this around
and really get that marinade going in there. One nice little tip that I love to do is take
a fork and just kind of make little puncture holes right the way through, all the way to
the bone. Ultimately what we're trying to do is tenderise the meat, flavour the meat, and then
when you take a nice big chunk that flavour goes all the way through to the bone which is
absolutely beautiful. So look let me go and wash my hands and then I'll show you how to cook it.
So right let's cook the chicken now, now a lot of people get very confused about indirect and
direct barbecuing, and also with the lid on or the lid off right? So let's just take the lid
off for a second. Let me show you how I lit this now this is a beautiful Weber kettle barbecue,
and let me just show you how I did it I started the coals on one of those lovely little lighters,
they work so efficiently and brilliantly. And then what they've done which is quite clever
actually is they've got these little baskets here which means I can do indirect roasting.
They're really hot over here, and then here it's not so hot. so when I put the lid back on this
turns into a giant roaster which is fantastic. So remember the chicken is actually seasoned,
and I'm gonna go skin side down I'm just gonna rub the bars with some of that fat.
And we'll go skin side down, let's get a little bit of colour happening.
Thighs on one side, chicken drumsticks on the others. So I'm going to colour, and then I'm
going to shift it into the middle, I'll put the lid on top and then I'm going to roast until that
meat is tender and the skin is crispy and it's going to be delicious. For me, cooking over fire
you know you want to have the hot areas the cool areas, and the next bit I think is fantastic for
really getting flavour going so what I'm going to do is take the chicken, place it in the middle,
and we're going to go from grilling to roasting by simply finding that indirect area like that.
I'll put lovely chickens in and around it like that. You've got plenty of space.
Beautiful. I'm going to take this little flap here and what you can do which is really fun and
nice and geeky is get some fruitwoods, this is apple wood. Just soak it in some water,
put that on top, and that'll start smoking. So as we're roasting that chicken we're smoking as well,
so that's like the extra seasoning that is really really good. What's genius about this
system is you put the lid on top right, you see the thermometer go up, I want it to be about 180
degrees Celsius which is like 350 Fahrenheit. Then I can start closing off the air out and the air
in. So control that temperature, that's your job when you're doing it, you're not going to burn it
unless the heat gets out of control but check it, and in 40 minutes I'll show you what to do next.
So the chicken's had 40 minutes, in that time those beautiful thighs and legs would
have tenderised and we want to get that meat to pull off the bone in the most beautiful
way. So let's just take the lid off. Look at that you can see it's sizzling away,
bubbling in there. You can always tell when drumsticks or thighs are cooked when you
can go into the meat and it just comes off the bone in the most beautiful way,
so that's happening already. Take these lovely thighs and bathe them,
submerge them in a wonderful barbecue sauce. Look at that glaze, that's what we want. This is my
homemade barbecue sauce, if you want the recipe click the link below and that's my recipe but
you can use any barbecue sauce you love, and then put it back in the middle. So, legs in.
Move it around look at that. Now what you don't want to do is put barbecue sauce which nearly
always, if always, has sugar in it or honey or maple syrup or something like that, palm sugar.
And you don't want to put that directly onto the bars because it will just burn. If you put it
into a screaming hot oven it will just burn. And unless you really watch it, it's going to give you
trouble. So what I like to do is make sure none of these touch right, I'm now going to put the
lid back on top and it'll be about 120 degrees. So 5 or 10 minutes and you know when it's good.
So, that chicken has been in there for just under 10 minutes
and yeah it'll carry on cooking a little bit but really it's just enough heat,
it's about like 140 degrees, just to make that lovely barbecue sauce just sit onto it make it
nice and sticky. Have a little look at that, oh the smell, and the smell is amazing. So let's get
the tongs and let's just place those beautiful thighs, they're so incredibly shiny.
There you go. If you've got any spring onions or anything like that you know you can put those over
the top, some herbs, a little bit of chilli there. If you had any citrus, lime, lemon,
stuff like that, you can just serve that as a nice little wedge on the back. Serve it with
whatever you want rice, flatbreads, you name it. But that my friends is beautiful barbecue,
chicken thighs and legs, cooked with beautiful spices and that gorgeous barbecue sauce glaze.
It's a nice principle for always guaranteeing that you've got tender, delicious, juicy meat,
and that lovely sweet sticky glaze, happy days.