Ayam Bakar (Indonesian Grilled Chicken) | Food Wishes

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Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with I am par.

That's right. There are hundreds of different versions of this Indonesian char grilled chicken. And the one I'm going to show you isn't any of those.

Right. My take is a very simple version using only easy to find ingredients. But despite that, this is still going to be incredible. And I believe the soul of the dish is intact. So, with that, let's go ahead and get started by prepping our chicken. And I'm going to be using these bone in skin on chicken thighs, which are perfect for brazing and grilling.

And since we're doing both of those things, it's the ideal cut. And once we figure out exactly where the bone is, we'll take a sharp knife and cut right in the center all the way down to the bone at a 90° angle. And then we'll make two more cuts on either side about a/ inch away. And that will allow for our thighs to cook faster and for that flavor to penetrate deeper. So I did that to six thighs total.

And once those are set, we can move on to the grinding

of the aromatics. And for this, we'll use a whole bunch of sliced shallots, although any other onion will work. But if you can, shallots are best. And then we'll also want to include some garlic as well as some lemongrass. And we're only going to slice up the lighter, more tender parts. And then we're also going to want to use a generous amount of fresh ginger, as well as something called kefir lime leaves, which I don't have, but I do have a Mexican lime tree.

So, I pulled off a few of the smallest, tenderest leaves, and I'm going to try to use those. And if you don't have either, they say we can use a little bit of lime zest. But anyway, what we'll do is toss all that in a food processor or a blender, and we will grind that into a very fine puree. And of course, you're going to want to stop a few times and scrape down the sides with a spatula, which I didn't show, but I did.