On the Wing - Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen

Yakitori, for a really big flavor, think small. Malaysian spatchcock chicken, sweet, fiery, and roaring with spice. And herb-stuffed game hams, you're really going to love this one. Poultry grilled the way you like it. I'm Stephen Reikland, and from the beautiful Esplendor Resort in southern Arizona, it's time to grill. Grilled chicken ranks among the world's most popular barbecue. Today, I'll show you how bird meats grill in Three Planet Barbecue Hotspots. You know, in many cultures, the barbecue grill is the focal point of family and social life. In fact, our word focus comes from the ancient Latin word focus, which was a raised hearth that was found in every ancient Roman home. Japanese grill masters believe that good things come in small packages. I should know. Believe it or not, folks, I was born in Nagoya, Japan. First up, a tiny grilled chicken kebab called yakitori. In Japan, it's a national fetish. The primal grill version begins with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. What you want to do is cut it across the grain into a strip about one and a half inches long. Then cut crosswise into pieces that are about a half an inch wide. The idea is that every piece will be bite-sized, so you don't need a knife and fork. Next, cut the white part of a scallion crosswise into pieces the same length. In Japan, they would use a leek-like vegetable called negi. Okay, all you need to do now is assemble the kebabs. Skewer a piece of chicken crosswise on a bamboo skewer. Then add a piece of scallion. And when you skewer the yakitori, you want to come right up to the end. Sometimes you'll see people make kebabs like that, but when you go to eat it, all you do is poke a hole in the roof of your mouth. And in Japan, they actually prefer dark meat chicken. In fact, in most of Planet Barbecue, dark meat is the preferred cut of the bird. Now, let me show you the dipping sauce. The sauce is called tare, and it will be good today, great next week, and absolutely fabulous in a month. I'll show you why. Start with thinly sliced ginger, and what you do is lightly flatten it with the side of a cleaver. That helps extract the ginger juices. So add the ginger to the pot, and then do the same with fresh garlic cloves, just lightly flattened. Then finally, the white part of the scallions. Add a strip of lemon zest, the oil-rich outer rind of the lemon. Then some mirin, a sweet rice wine from Japan, or use regular wine, and a little more sugar, and soy sauce. Whisk these ingredients together until the sugar is dissolved. Then place the sauce on the grill to come to a boil. The Japanese are fanatics about charcoal, as they are about all matters culinary. The preferred charcoal in Japan is called binchotan. It's an extremely hard, extremely clean and slow-burning charcoal made from oak. And a piece this size would cost $3 or $4. OK, that's the charcoal. Let me show you the grill. The traditional grill in Japan is the hibachi. The way you load the charcoal in is through this chute. And to control the heat, you open and close the damper. Wide open, more air, more heat. Want to cool the heat down, close the damper a little bit. And as always, we start by keeping it hot, keeping it clean. And here's a cool idea. If you forgot your grill brush, simply crumple up a piece of aluminum foil, and hold it in tongs, and rub it across the bars of the grate. I call this a Luddite grill brush. And finally, with a folded paper towel dipped in oil, draw it across the bars of the grate. So to put the chicken on, place an aluminum foil grill shield. And that keeps the wooden skewers from burning. In Japan, yakitori grills are extremely slender, and the skewer end would hang over the edge. In Japan, yakitori bars are true neighborhood fast food joints. Many are found in subway stations. Salarymen will come for a few kebabs and a couple of beers before the long commute home. Yaki means grilled or roasted, by the way, and tori means chicken. So once the yakitori are browned on the bottom and turn opaque on the edges, you want to turn each one over. Cooking time is quick, just a couple of minutes on each side. You can see that that tare sauce has reduced to a thick, syrupy dipping sauce. What you want to do is dip the partially cooked yakitori in the sauce. It's very important to wait until both sides are brown, so you don't contaminate the sauce with raw chicken. And what will happen in a Japanese yakitori parlor is each time you dip a chicken skewer in the sauce, you add extra flavor. So at the end of the day, they'll add more soy sauce, more sugar, more mirin. And in some famous yakitori parlors, the tare sauce can be months or even years old. To test the yakitori for doneness, just give it a little poke. The chicken should feel firm to the touch. Here's that sauce. You can sprinkle the yakitori with sesame seeds and a little chopped scallion green. Oishi! That means delicious in Japanese. What's really nice is the way that sugar soy mixture cooks to a caramelized candy crust. So sometimes, to achieve big flavors on the grill, you have to think small. The art of barbecue really boils down to two things. It's seasoning the meat so that it's explosively flavorful and cooking it to the degree of doneness that you desire. It's really about you controlling the fire, not about the fire controlling you. Malaysia may be the best-kept grilling secret in Asia. Case in point, this spatchcock chicken with fiery Kelantan spice paste. Spatchcock? Kelantan? Don't worry. All will be illuminated. What you need to know is that a small investment in time will give you a huge dividend in flavor. First, the chicken. Spatchcocking is the process of opening up a chicken like a book so you can grill it directly on the small grills you find throughout Asia. The first step is to cut out the backbone. You can see I'm using poultry shears here. You cut on one side of the backbone, then the other side. Open up the chicken, and using a paring knife, make a cut along the breastbone. And break it down on one side, then the other side to reveal the breastbone. And pull it out as you see here. You can just take a little nick with the knife. So now you've opened up your chicken. Next step is to make a slit in the thin skin between the thigh and the breast. Then slip the end of the drumstick through the thigh and pull it forward. Now turn it around and do the other side the same way. Tuck the wing tips under the wings. Finally, any little pieces of bone sticking up, you can trim them off with poultry shears. So there's your spatchcock chicken. And the beauty is now you can cook a whole chicken using the direct method. Remember in Asia they don't have our big grills with our covers for indirect grilling. Okay, let me wash my hands. Always important to do when you're handling chicken. Now the Kelantan marinade. It starts with toasted coconut and fresh lemongrass. And this is what a fresh lemongrass stalk looks like. It's an herb used throughout Southeast Asia. Has a lemony flavor, kind of an herbal lemony flavor, no acidity. What you do to prepare lemongrass is cut the top half to third. And then the part you actually use is this fragrant core in the center. So next add thinly sliced fresh ginger or galangal. And elephant garlic or regular garlic. Thinly sliced shallots and jalapeno chilies. The spices are three, ground coriander, ground cumin, and ground turmeric. And finally, a coarse salt. Now, puree the ingredients to a coarse paste. Whenever you work in the food processor, you start with your solid ingredients. And once they're ground together, then add your liquid ingredients. Last of all, add vegetable oil and little water to help form a paste. This marinade comes from the northeastern most province of Malaysia, an area called Kelantan, which borders Thailand. So the use of coconut, lemongrass, and chilies, very Thai ingredients. Spoon about a third of the marinade on the bottom of your baking dish. And place the spatchcock chicken on top. Then spoon the remaining Kelantan marinade on top of the bird. The reason Malaysian grilling is so flavorful is that it actually reflects four different ethnic influences. There are the Malays, who love chilies and coconut milk. There are Indians, who like spices like turmeric. There are Chinese, who use soy sauce and oyster sauce. And then there's a style of cooking called nonya, or grandmother cooking, which actually combines all influences. Okay, we'll marinate the chicken in the refrigerator for at least four hours, or as long as overnight. In Malaysia, they would use coconut charcoal. I'm using a natural briquette. It contains no coal dust or petroleum binders. And as always, we light the charcoal in a chimney starter. Place either a crumpled newspaper or a paraffin fire starter in the bottom of the chimney, coals in the top. Beauty of the chimney starter, the upright vertical shape helps the coals light uniformly. And again, always light the chimney in the grill. Let me show you how to set up the fire. Here are some lit coals. Dump them out and rake out the coals over about two-thirds of the bottom grate. One-third is coal-free. This will be my safety zone. And then just put the grill grate on the grill, always with the bars running towards you. Let me get the chicken. It's marinated for about six hours. And what you wanna do is start grilling it bone side down. That's how they do it in Malaysia. And you can spoon any excess marinade on top of the chicken. And this lemongrass chili smoke is absolutely unbelievable. So you wanna grill the chicken over a moderate heat. And if it's too hot, just reach down and close that vent. That'll cut the air flow, bring the temperature down. If your chicken should start to burn, all you need to do is rotate the grate around, move your chicken over the safety zone, let the flames die down, then you can move it back. After 15 minutes, you wanna turn the bird over, grill it for another 15 minutes. Now this side you really wanna watch because it's skin side down. There will be some dripping fat, you can get some flare-ups. So to check the chicken for doneness, just slide it over to your safety zone. And then you wanna insert the instant-read meat thermometer in the deepest part of the thigh. You're looking for 165 degrees, we've got it. Just transfer the spatchcock chicken to a platter. Sprinkle it with some toasted sesame seeds and squeeze a little lime juice over it. And there it is, your Malaysian-style spatchcock chicken. Let's see how we did. This is great. You got the lemongrass, you got the coconut, it's a little sweet, it's a little tangy, and it's a little fiery. So there you go, from Malaysia to Primal Grill to you. It's spatchcock chicken on the grill. Spit roasting is one of the most universal techniques for live fire cooking all over the world. In Malaysia, you find spit-roasted chicken wings. In Morocco, you find spit-roasted lamb. In France, you find spit-roasted chickens. There are many ways to grill poultry. One of the best is to a turn. Centuries ago, rotisseries were cranked literally by hand. Grillmasters took great pride in cooking the meat to a turn. Which brings us to our final dish, herb-stuffed spit-roasted game hens. Let me show you how to get from here to here. What makes these game hens so incredibly succulent is that you put the stuffing right under the skin. To start, insert your forefinger under the skin and loosen it first from the breast, then come around and loosen it around the thigh and the drumstick. This feels extremely weird the first time you do it. But with a little practice, it will become second nature. So the game hen is ready for stuffing. Now, let me show you the herb filling. Start with about a cup of your favorite chopped fresh herbs. I have basil, rosemary, and tarragon here. Next, add finely chopped garlic, salt, freshly ground black pepper, and for a tangy touch, Dijon-style mustard. The French influence here is obvious. Finally, a little freshly squeezed lemon juice. And I squeeze it between my fingers to catch the seeds. Now, puree these ingredients together and gradually work in about a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil. You could think of this as a sort of pesto where the mustard replaces the cheese. Lift up and spoon some of this mustard-herb mixture under the skin. Then flatten the bird down and just sort of squeeze the herb stuffing over the thighs, over the legs. Put a little more in. We'll do this side too. Don't forget to put some of the herb stuffing in the cavity. Finally, stuff a couple of sage leaves on top of the breast under the skin. What's going to happen is when the game hens cook, you'll see the outline of the sage leaves. Trust the bird to give it a cylindrical form. And by skewering the bird's tail to tail like this, you leave plenty of room for the legs to brown. Let me show you the grill. I've set up the grill for spit roasting, lit the rear infrared rotisserie burner, and also the two outside burners. So all you need to do is fit the end of the spit into the rotisserie motor and place drip pans under the game hens. Then switch on the motor and close the grill. Well, it's been 40 minutes and the birds look beautiful. But to check for doneness, you want to use your trusty Instant Reade meat thermometer. Insert it in the deepest part of the thigh, not touching the bone. You're looking for 165. We're there. Put on grill gloves. Remember, the spit and prongs are going to be hot. And put the birds on a baking sheet. And then I have one other surprise for you. So I'm just going to take off the drip pans. And I'm going to set the grill up for direct grilling. So what you want to do now is unscrew the prongs and then slide off your game hens. Tent the birds with foil. Keep you warm. And let me show you the side dish. It's grilled polenta. And polenta is a sort of cornmeal mush. Brush the tops of the polentas with extra virgin olive oil. And season with coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper. So why do I cut the polenta shapes in half moons? Well, if you have a whole tray of polenta and you use a round cutter, there's no waste. All right, now turn the polenta pieces over. So once the grill is raging hot, then grab the polenta. And arrange it on the grill, running diagonal to the bars of the grate. The grilling time is about two minutes per side. Remember, the polenta is already cooked. OK, so the birds have rested. And what you want to do is untrust each game hen. Just snip off the string. And then arrange the game hens on your platter. Let's see how we did. Look at that. You can see how the herbs just soak right into the meat. Nailed it. If you like herbs, you're going to love these spit-roasted game hens. So there you have it. Japanese yakitori, Malaysian spatchcock chicken, French rotisserie game hens. When bird meets grill, everyone wins. What you do to prepare lemongrass is you cut off then some mirin, sweetened... Then some mirin, sweetened white... sweetened rice. Then some mirin, sweetened riced wine. Just like to keep you on your toes. You're looking for 165 degrees. This really explodes with savor.