Chicken on a Stick

My children love eating things on a stick. I think it appeals to their sense of danger. They haven't realized yet we keep them separated at table so they can't spear each other with dangerous pointy objects. They still think it's so we can make sure vegetables get on their plate! Ah, the innocence of youth.

We had these for dinner the other evening but if you use a smaller skewer and smaller chunks of meat you can serve these as an appetizer!

Now if you happen to live next to an Asian Grocery go get this stuff! If you read the label you'll see it's a Product of Indonesia. Which is appropriate since an Indonesian man I worked with introduced me to it!
It's like molasses and soy sauce all mixed together in some sort of twisted, salty, sweet, odd couple.

If you do happen to travel to the Asian grocery store check out everything there. Evidently there's plenty of call for prepackaged foods in the Asian immigrant community! It's a bond we share. I'm sure there's very little melamine in them too . . .

If you do purchase this just add a ton of garlic to it and you've got marinade! A suitable marinade for chicken, pork, beef, or salmon even. Unfortunately, I have to travel over to . . . gasp . . . KANSAS . . . to get it. Doesn't it seem a little weird that I have to travel to Kansas for exotic Asian ingredients?

Now for those of you not near an Asian store or who want to work with what you've got at home let's get started.

Grab some soy sauce and some molasses! I get the mega size at the Asian grocery for cheap! The molasses are leftover from molasses cookies at Christmas time.

I had to break out a new bottle of molasses! It's thick and sweet and has a licorice flavor to it. Can you believe this is the "light" variety? It's flavor is so strong I can't imagine what the full strength versions are like!

An equal part of soy sauce.

Give them a little stir.

Now for some garlic! Mince it in the manner you desire and stir it in too.

Take some beautiful ginger and peel it and minced it up into tiny pieces too. It joins the soy party!

I wanted more acid and citrus notes so I added an equal part of orange juice. This is fresh squeezed!

It's fresh squeezed because I have clementines that my kids won't eat because they're not "pretty" looking anymore. Frankly, they're also at the stage where they're losing some sweetness too. So I'm now adding orange juice to everything I possibly can sneak it into to.

Now I'm going to add a little heat to the party! You could add hot sauce too if you wanted to. Asian groceries have the BEST hot sauces.

I'm going to add a little of this too. I was reading the label and mine has SEVEN spices in it! Where's the authorities on this? Where is the FDA? Anyway it generally has things like cinnamon, ginger, cloves, pepper, anise, fennel, and licorice root in it. So you could throw in a pinch of any of those if you liked.

I sliced up some chicken breast and put them on skewers.

Put the marinade on them and flip them around in this until they have a nice coating.

Now I was prepping this dinner so that I could do most of the work ahead of time and just throw things  under the broiler at the last minute. Most of the time I marinade the chicken and then put it on the skewers right before I cook it. It's much easier to marinade in a bowl or bag! It's a flexible thing.

I only marinated them about 45 minutes. Since they were in a flat pan I had to flip them over half way to make sure the other side was getting the goodness too.

I had to put them on a rack so that I could broil them. We had an unexpected cold snap you see. I've been waiting a week now for it to end. I am so ready to grill!

I like to throw on some sesame seeds. Distracts the eye from the irregularities of sliced chicken breast.

I broiled the first side 5 minutes and then I flipped them over to finish the other side for another couple of minutes.

There it is! Dinner is ready and the kiddos are right there to be handed pointy sticks!

The molasses caramelizes under the broiler beautifully. The chicken has a lovely salty sweet flavor with hints of ginger and garlic goodness.

The longer you leave the chicken in the marinade the better it is. Could you just stick whole chicken breasts in this marinade and grill them later? Yes you could!

Sweet Soy Chicken

2 lbs chicken breast, cut into strips
1-2 Tbsp sesame seeds
12-16 skewers

for the marinade
1/3 cup molasses
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup orange juice
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1/4 tsp Chinese 5 Spice powder,


Mix marinade ingredients and pour over chicken. Marinade at least 1 hour. Two or three hours is ideal. Skewer chicken and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Grill or broil 8-10 minutes, turning once while cooking.