This “huli chicken” recipe was featured in our recent “Ultimate Backyard Lu’au”
The term “huli” means “to turn” in Hawaiian. “Huli huli chicken” is a term many locals know well. It draws up memories of school or church fundraisers where thousands of marinated chickens were being grilled over large beds of kiawe (mesquite) charcoal. These huli huli chickens were some of the most delicious, succulent birds I’ve ever tasted.
How many of you are thinking about going Hawaiian?
While most of us aren’t able to fly to Hawai’i, we can bring the tastes of Hawai’i to our homes – by throwing a lu’au! A lu’au is a Hawaiian feast featuring traditional foods such as poi, kalua pig, poke (“POH-kay”), lomi salmon and haupia. Often, there will be music as well as hula dancing.
Not many of you might know how to throw a lu’au. Being from Hawai’i, I wanted to share some of these traditional lu’au foods with you all. So if you’re looking for lu’au food recipes, this would be the place to come.
Continue reading Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Ultimate Backyard Lu’au
Smoke ’em if you got ’em!
Shoyu chicken is a very popular dish often served at Hawaiian parties. Chicken pieces are braised in a sweet shoyu (or soy sauce) based sauce until tender, and then served over rice. Sometimes, the chicken is marinated first, then baked or grilled. But if you’ve got a barbecue smoker, you can take shoyu chicken to new levels of taste!
This dish is another classic Chinese dish that originally calls for 1 cup each of 3 main ingredients: soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine, hence the name 3 Cups chicken (Sam Pui Kai)! However,1 cup of each ingredient is quite a bit too much for me. Imagine having a whole cup of sesame oil in there! You’d have a circle of oil lubing your mouth if you did that. Not too pleasant!
So, I looked up some recipes and decided to adapt all the different recipes into my own (heavily borrowing from Amy Beh’s original recipe on kuali.com). After a bit of experimenting I find that instead of 3 cups of everything, it’s actually better to have one part sesame oil to two parts soy sauce to three parts rice wine (1:2:3 chicken might be a more appropriate name ^_^). Continue reading 3 Cups Chicken Recipe