The other day I bought some proper satay powder at a fancy spice store, and now is the time to start cooking with it.

I’m sure there’s plenty of good recipes that include satay, but I wanted to kick things off with a classic: chicken satay skewers.

As always, I improvised with what I had in my kitchen at the moment. Here is what I ended up doing:

I used 1 red onion, 125g of firm tofu, 300g of chicken breasts, and cut them all up into chunks ready to be spiked.

Then I prepared a marinade with 1 table spoon of oil, soy sauce, cider vinegar, honey, and 4 tea spoons of satay powder.

You have to let the whole thing marinate for a while, so I left it in the fridge for 1h30. If you’re motivated, do some sport in the meantime, this way you’ll be super hungry (food always tastes better when you’re hungry).

When I ran out of patience, I started pre-heating the oven at 200°C and preparing the skewers with the marinated chunky bits.

Then I just put the skewers in the oven for about 20-25 minutes, above a tray or something to avoid nasty juice drips at the bottom of the oven. You have to be sure that the chicken is actually fully cooked for obvious survival reasons, but not too cooked either or it’s going to be dry.

I was quite pleased with the result: the chicken was tender, the tofu got nicely soaked with all the flavors in the marinade, and the taste of satay was delicious. Served with plain white rice, simple and efficient.

One note though: I used chestnut honey, however the taste is a bit too strong in this context and tends to hide the other flavors. After all, the honey is only here for a pleasant sweet kick, nothing else.

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