Spicy Pepper Chicken with Sweet Thai Chili Sauce

Spicy Pepper Chicken

By now, people reading my blog will know that I like very spicy food. I like to use pepper flavors from all over the world, blend them together to try and find the combinations that work. I could use the peppers in their raw state and make my own sauces but I also like to experiment with ready made pepper sauces to see how they play with one another in recipes! The end result I try to get is not having any one pepper sauce flavor dominate the taste but instead get the flavors to act like the different notes in a glass of wine. Naturally, such spicy food has to be balanced with the right amount of sweetness to make the end result lip-smacking good! This recipe uses pepper sauces from Peru, Jamaica, and Thailand, and also a variety of Chinese and Japanese seasonings. Because the Sweet Thai Chili Sauce is not spicy enough, I kick it up a notch by using the Guilin Chili Sauce from China. While it is probably better to do this on an open grill, it can also be done in an oven with just a few more steps in the process!

 Some ingredients you need:

Ingredients

2 ½ lbs chicken thighs (about 6), bone in, skin on

Marinade

½ tsp Jamaican Meat seasoning (Jamaica)

½ tbsp dried jerk seasoning (Jamaica)

1/2 tbsp wet jerk seasoning (Jamaica)

1 tbsp Worcester sauce (England)

1 tbsp Sriracha pepper sauce (Asia)

1 tbsp aji Panca paste (Peru)

1 tbsp aji amarillo paste (Peru)

1 tbsp thick soya sauce (this is a mixture of soya blended with molasses. It gives a nice char to the chicken skin) (China)

1 tbsp marukan vinegar (this is a Japanese vinegar with 4.5% acidity, not the usual 5% as is found in standard vinegar)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp pickapeppa sauce (Jamaica)

Sauce

 1 cup Thai Sweet chili sauce for Chicken ( I like the "Flying Horse" brand)

1 tbsp Guilin chili sauce

Method

1. Make 2-3 cuts in the chicken thigh on both sides, down to the bone. Place in a 1 gallon plastic Ziploc bag

2. Mix all marinade ingredients together and pour over chicken thighs. Massage well through the plastic. Marinate in refrigerator overnight. DO NOT add the Thai Chili sauce and Guilin sauce at this point!

3. Remove thighs from bag and broil in a roaster pan with a rack until the skin develops a char on both sides, as seen in the photo below.The chicken is not cooked at this stage so handle it as you would any raw meat.

4. Remove from under broiler and transfer to smaller baking dish so that the thighs fit closely together. At this point, pour the sauce mixture over the chicken and cover with foil. 

5. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 1 hour. Take out of oven oven and remove foil. 

6. Place baking dish with chicken and sauce under broiler, and broil until the sauce starts to bubble and the skin starts to char. 

7. Remove from under the broiler. Pour sauce into a small saucepan and reduce until the volume is decreased by half. Plate and serve. 

After sauce reduction, sauce thickens and coats the chicken.