Piri Piri Chicken

Make this chicken.

Sure, you have to make a marinade/sauce but it requires whacking shit into a blender, okay? No chopping etc

It’s delightfully simple to make while tasting complex and intentional.

If you don’t have a grill, bake it.

Vegetarian? Dress fried or grilled tofu with the sauce.

Serve it with a super simple tomato salad dressed with a splash of red wine vinegar, sliced red or white onion (hack: soak the sliced onion in a bit of vinegar for 20 minutes to take out some of the bite), salt, pepper, and chopped fresh parsley as well as roasted potatoes. You can slice them into rounds as shown, cube them, whatever. I toss my potatoes in olive oil, salt and pepper them, and roast in the oven at 425 for about 30 minutes, flipping after 20 minutes and letting them go for another 10, depending on their thickness.

BONUS MEAL: roast some extra potatoes and use the other half of the bell pepper so that you can make a super fast breakfast hash the next morning. I like to sauté a little onion and bell pepper until they’re soft and then set aside on a plate. Using the same pan, drizzle some olive oil and set the stove to medium high.

Add the leftover potatoes in a single layer so that they heat through and crisp on the outside, add the onions and pepper, fry an egg to throw on top, and drizzle some of the leftover piri piri sauce.

Piri Piri Chicken

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1/2 medium sized red bell pepper, seeded and cut into chunks

Zest and juice from one lemon

4 cloves garlic, peeled

1 whole shallot, peeled

1 piri piri or serrano pepper

1/4 cup fresh parsley

1.5 tsp paprika

1 tsp dried oregano

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 Tbsp olive oil

1.5 tsp salt

Fresh cracked pepper

Put it all into the blender and blend until smooth. Taste it! Decide if it needs a little more salt or acid.

Put the chicken in a 9x13 baking dish and drizzle with olive oil, toss to coat.

Pour half the marinade on top of the chicken and then flip to coat well.

Let it marinate for at least 30 minutes at room temp. If you can go longer re: overnight is better but if you’re doing that you’ll want it to go into the fridge obviously, and then pulled out 30 minutes prior to grilling.

Preheat your grill to the highest setting for 10 minutes

Knock it down to medium high

Set the chicken thighs down at a bit of an angle, close the lid, set the timer for four minutes.

After the first four minutes rotate the chicken, don’t flip, so that you’re creating grill marks. If you don’t give a shit about grill marks simply let it go for 8 minutes on the first side and then 6-8 minutes on the second side (remembering to rotate, not flip, every four minutes if you do want the grill marks)

Once it’s cooked for 8 minutes on one side, flip it over.

You might need to knock the heat down to medium to finish out the remaining cook time depending on your grill. We like color and burnt bits on the outside of our meat which is why I cook on pretty/really high heat. If you don’t want that you can start out on medium and see what happens.

TLDR depending on the size of your chicken thighs it takes about 14-16 minutes total cook time for thighs. The ones I get are from Costco and are medium to smaller, I’d say. I pull the smaller ones off a couple minutes before the rest.

As always, let your chicken rest in a single layer on a clean baking sheet for at least 10 minutes prior to eating.

Tada.