Recipe: Aoife’s Amazing Sticky Chicken

My pal Aoife McLysaght gave me this recipe and frankly, the English language is inadequate to describe just how delicious it is.  I’m going to have to learn Russian or something.  As well as being very tasty, it’s also extremely simple to make, and very affordable to put together. Hurray! I am struggling to find reasons to cook anything else.  Aoife adapted the recipe slightly from a Bill Granger cookbook, and did the gorgeous illustrated recipe that you see above.

Ingredients

• One small whole chicken
• 1 ½tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 75 ml oyster sauce
• Half a red onion
• 2 cloves garlic

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200°.
2. Whizz the brown sugar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, red onion and garlic together with a blender to make the marinade.
3. Prick the chicken all over with a fork.
4. Baste the chicken with about a third of the marinade.  Cook for twenty minutes, baste again and repeat this two more times, until it’s been basted three times and cooked for about an hour: check this useful guide to chicken cooking times on chicken.ie.

What you will get when you’ve finished is the most delicious, sticky-salty-sweet coating on some incredibly tender chicken.  Peter pronounced it “better than Crackbird”.

I’ve cooked this twice now and each time have served it with a different Asian-style salad.  Last time I did this Asian Style Brown Rice Salad with Orange Sesame-Soy Dressing from TheCozyApron.com (leaving the shredded chicken out of the salad) and it was a lovely combination.  It’s the kind of dish that could work well with many things, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with it more.  Try the sticky chicken – you won’t regret it – and let us know what you think.