hello this is chef john from food wishes comm rib me so honey chicken that's
right for decades chefs have avoided putting these two ingredients together
because of a certain notorious and highly controversial rap song from the
ladings but because they combine to make such an
incredible marinade and enough time has gone by the lots of our younger viewers
have no idea what i'm talking about i've decided to put miso and honey
together and feature them in this easy and incredibly delicious grilled chicken
recipe so with that let's go ahead get started by adding a big old spoon of
white miso to this mixing bowl and if you're not familiar mesa was basically a
fermented paste made from rice barley soy beans among other things and if
you're wondering why something called white miso is gold I will be explaining
that on the blog post not very well but I'll give you something and then to that
we'll add the co-star of this marinade which will be some honey and as usual we
always want to use local honey although I can never remember why I think you
have something to do with allergies and then we'll go ahead and finish this
mixture off with a splash of rice vinegar as well as whatever you think is
the right amount of hot sauce and this time I'm using sriracha but literally
any hot pepper or hot sauce would work and then after the hot sauce we'll
finish up with a spoon of salt and that's it we'll take a whisk and give
this a mix and fair warning because it's kind of grainy miso is not the easiest
thing to whisk in which is why some people would heat this and or do it in a
blender but I'm gonna skip those extra steps because for a marinade this does
not have to be perfectly smooth all right what you see here is just fine and
then to that we'll add whatever pieces of chicken we're gonna grill which for
me are these two half chickens and one thing I'm going to do before I start
tossing these in the marinade is do that trick where we take a knife and make
like three or four slashes into the leg and thigh so that that cooks a little
faster and our breast meat does not get overcooked while we're waiting for that
to cook through Plus once it's cooked I think those slashes make this look a
little cooler visually but I can't prove that but anyway let's continue on with
the second part of the old slash and sloshed as we toss that chicken in the
marinade until it's thoroughly coated and we've gotten that mixture into every
nook and cranny oh and one other small tip I like to
remove those wing flats cook those separately I think it makes a
chicken easier to work with plus provides the chef with a tasty snack
about halfway through and then once that said all we have to do is decide how
long we're gonna let this marinate my official recommendation is overnight but
in the spirit of full disclosure I only pop mine in the fridge for a couple
hours which I'm gonna say is the bare minimum
all right longer is better but regardless of how long you go once you
pull that either fridge what we want to do is flip it over and not wipe or brush
off any of the marinade right just leave it on there since we're gonna basically
grill this as is although I do like to give the skin a generous sprinkling of
kosher salt for we hit the grill and if you want to and I really think you do
I'd reserve any of that excess marinade and that way we can baste our chicken
with that as it grills but anyway I'm going to go ahead and generously salt
this surface at which point we'll grab our tongs and head outside where we're
gonna cook this covered over indirect heat and that foil thing you see is just
a wrap ceramic heat diffuser which come with these type of grills but if you're
just using a regular grill you can accomplish the same thing by having your
coals on one side and then your chicken on the other and that's another thing
we'll go over in the blog post but anyway I'm gonna go ahead and start mine
skin side up and I'll go ahead and cover that and let it go for about 20 minutes
maintaining a temperature of about 350 give or take and then all we're gonna do
after 20 minutes is give those a flip it sure does look a little disturbing at
this point but don't worry it gets much better and while I think the smokiness
of grilling absolutely works perfectly with this marinade it will also totally
work with other cooking methods okay if you wanted to brush that chicken with a
little bit of butter and pan-roasted a la French bistro that would also be
fantastic but of course if you did use a French approach you'd have to call it
Poulet on me so honey but it would work as would broiling but anyway like I said
we'll give that side a flip and give it another 20 minutes at which point we'll
take a look and I can show you exactly why indirect heat is so important all
right because of the honey in the marinade if your heat is too direct it's
gonna turn black like this wing which apparently was too close to the edge so
unfortunately I'm gonna have to eat that but before I do I'll go ahead and flip
these over one last time and since it looks like that back
position is getting a little more heat I'm gonna go ahead and rotate my halves
and then what we'll do before we cover this is give it a nice brushing with any
reserved marinade which at this stage you can do as many times as you want and
we will cover that back up and continue cooking until it's done which for me is
when the inside the thigh is about 160 to 165 and normally at this point you
get a final close-up shot of me pulling this stuff off the grill but that is now
what's gonna happen since it started to rain which it never does in San
Francisco so I was totally caught off guard and the chicken needs to come off
immediately so I move my camera inside and I went with a long distance shot of
me taking it off the grill and by the way if you've never seen me on camera
before you're probably thinking two things chef john is bald and also
probably chef john got that wagon but anyway I just wanted to explain why
you're seeing me on camera and also show why I'm usually not so I pulled that
chicken off and headed back in where I was extremely happy with the results
sure I had a little bit uneven charring but I think Erica's is smelled amazing
and I knew it was gonna taste amazing which it did garnish with some lemon
wedges that I sprinkled with some hot pepper flakes although if you like lime
I think that would be just as good if not better
both would work so that will be up to you I mean you are after all the to Live
Crew of your cockadoodledoo so I went ahead and squeezed the little spicy
citrus over that meats and went in for the official taste and for a marinade
that only has a couple ingredients that I only let the chicken soak in for a
couple hours this was incredibly flavorful and delicious and if you've
never worked with miso before it really does provide a lot of umami flavor which
is just a fancy foodie word for a stream savoriness so while this is an extremely
simple marinade the flavors it produces are anything but and above and beyond
the great taste it provided it also kept this chicken very moist and tender
although a lot of that is just out overcooking it but whether we're talking
to juicy middle of the thigh or the driest tip of the breasts
I find this marinade very very effective in fact I was enjoying this so much I
didn't even bother with side dishes I basically just did there and ate a half
chicken all by itself and I had zero regrets
but anyway that's it's what we're calling me so honey chicken no matter
which chicken parts you use this out or how you cook it or how nice the weather
is if you get this marinade into your recipe rotation I think it's something
you're gonna love long time so I really do hope you give this a try soon head
over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you