Today we're cooking up classic peri-peri chicken. I'm going to show you how to make a delicious
peri-peri sauce that you'll want to smother on everything, I'm also going to share with you a
hack for cooking your chicken in extra quick time whilst ensuring it still stays lovely and moist.
Hi, I'm Nicky, welcome back to our kitchen where we show you how to make delicious
family-friendly recipes. Now it took quite a bit of time to get this peri-peri chicken recipe
just right, we really wanted to ensure we get that zesty heat
in the sauce that works so well with the chicken, so let's get cooking. We're going
to start by preheating the oven to 180c or 350f and we're going to start making the sauce.
Place two roughly chopped red bell peppers and two
roughly chopped red onions on a non-stick baking tray.
Drizzle over two tablespoons of oil.
Now we're going to sprinkle on a teaspoon each of paprika smoked paprika and salt
along with two teaspoons of cayenne pepper.
Now get in there with your hands and mix it all together and then spread it out on the baking tray.
And place it in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. We're roasting the veggies to give that sauce
a lovely depth of flavor, after that initial 20 minutes we're gonna add in four peeled cloves of
garlic, we're also gonna add two red chillies that have been sliced in half and deseeded to the tray.
Move everything around on the tray and then place back into the oven for a further 10 minutes.
Once that's finished cooking in the oven we're going to whizz that up to make a really tasty
sauce. Now I'm gonna use my mini chopper for this but you can use a hand blender if you wanted to.
Transfer the roasted veggies to the chopper making sure you pour in all the juices from the tray.
Now we're going to add in about 10 of these little birdseye chillies, these will give
the sauce a serious kick of heat, now you can add more or less depending on how spicy you like it.
So add in those chilies along with quarter of a teaspoon each of white pepper
and dried rosemary, plus a zest and juice of a lemon.
Blend it all together until you get a fairly smooth paste.
Now to loosen that up a little we're going to
add in 90 ml, which is about a third of a cup plus two teaspoons, of oil
we're also going to add in four tablespoons of red wine vinegar.
Now blend it again until you've got the consistency of a nice thick sauce.
Okay so that's the sauce done now as you can see I like my sauce quite nice and thick
but if you wanted to thin it out a little bit you could just add
a good splash of water and give it a stir together.
Now we're going to prepare the chicken now to cut the chicken faster whilst also ensuring
it's still lovely and juicy we're going to butterfly or spatchcock the chicken.
This is easier to do than you might think so what we need
to do is take the chicken and turn it over so we can see the backbone.
So once we've cut through both sides of the backbone we're going to remove that backbone
and discard it or you can save it for stock. Now I recommend using a really good pair of kitchen
scissors or shears to do this job. So we need to turn the chicken over so it's breast-side up again
and press down on that breastbone to make sure it's nice and flat. And that's it as simple as
that to spatchcock a chicken, now we're going to transfer that chicken over onto a baking tray.
Now pour one third of that sauce that we made earlier over the chicken and spread it all over.
And sprinkle on half a teaspoon each of salt and black pepper.
Place that in the oven, which should still be at 180c or 350 f.
Now that chicken goes in the oven initially for 45 minutes. This recipe plus 99 others appear in
my new book, It's all about dinner, I'll leave a link below so you can pre-order your copy.
Now we take the chicken out of the oven after 45 minutes and give it a baste.
Once we've basted the chicken pour-over another couple of tablespoons of that spicy sauce
and place back in the oven for a further 10 to 15 minutes
until the chicken is cooked through. We know it's cooked through because the juices run clear.
Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.
I love to serve this up with some chips, flatbreads and a nice green salad.
This would also work really well on the barbecue, okay let's give it a taste
it's really really juicy and spicy.