THAI SATAY CHICKEN (GAI SATAE)

Satay chicken is popular all over South-east Asia. Its perfect accompaniment, peanut dipping sauce, can either be made fresh or the Satay Seasoning Powder can be purchased in a packet. Traditionally satay chicken is cooked over a barbeque, giving it its charcoaled look.

In Thailand these small, tasty skewers, can be found everywhere. Each food market will have at least one stall selling them for a few baht a stick. Street vendors peddle them at night, into the early hours of the morning.

Satay Chicken is popular for many reasons. It is the ideal snack to eat on the hoof, just grab a few skewers from a street stall and munch as you go. Satay Chicken is tasty, and is the perfect addition to any meal, either as a side dish, or as something more substantial.

Satay Chicken is most often served with a kind of spicy, sweet peanut sauce. Although this is not a strict necessity, and many Thai people eat them as they come.

Where Thai Satay chicken differs from other forms of Satay Chicken found throughout Asia, is in the marinade used to give the barbequed meat its great flavour.

Thai Satae marinade is made using lemon grass, onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric and coriander, and it is this special marinade that gives the Thai variant of this popular snack a certain special flavour.

Preparation of the marinade is the hardest part of cooking your own Thai style Satae Chicken. Fortunately, once prepared, the marinade can be kept for quite some time if refrigerated (and some would say the longer the better), so it can be prepared in advance and kept.

The chicken itself is cut into strips or small squares, and marinated overnight (usually), allowing the chicken to soak up the flavours. It is then threaded on to small wooden skewers and barbequed over charcoal.

For absolute perfection, a peanut sauce will need to be prepared. This may sounds simple, but the complex taste this component provides does not come cheaply, it needs to be made properly.

The ingredients for the peanut sauce include roasted peanuts, water, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, brown sugar, fish sauce, tamarind paste, cayenne pepper and coconut milk. This wide range of ingredients is what gives the flavour of the peanut sauces its complexity.

Although the historical roots of Satay Chicken are somewhat clouded, it is thought to have originated somewhere in Indonesia, and the popularity of the dish in that country would seem to support this fact. However, the Thai people have managed to adapt this simple recipe and give it their own Thai style and flavour.