Sweet and sticky chicken, with a glaze based on pineapple juice. A Filipino-inspired recipe for the grill.

Time: 4/5
One simply cannot hurry a charcoal fire

Effort: 4/5
Mothering a grill and skewering meat can be pretty tiring after a work day

Pinoy Flavour

Tocino is a term used in Filipino cuisine to describe cured pork, which is typically very sweet. The same flavour profile can be readily adapted for various other meats, especially those intended for the grill. The way by which I came across this recipe is a story that stems from my childhood and South-east Asian socio-economics.

It’s safe to say that I had a privileged upbringing. I grew up in a dual-income household in a high cost-of-living city where it’s common practice for urban professional parents such as my own to hire a live-in domestic maid from surrounding areas such as the Philippines and Indonesia to take care of childcare, cooking and other household duties.

While it wasn’t quite the full-on aristocratic British nanny experience, I was raised as much by our Filipino maid as by my parents. Because of that, I developed an affinity for Pinoy flavours simply by proximity and diffusion.

Filipino food would fill the lunch menu during the summers, when school was out and we had the house to ourselves during the day. I can’t recall the number of times when the two of us would have a big pot of chicken adobo throughout the week for lunch. Or, small mackerel stewed in vinegar. Or, the simple delight that is sinangag (garlic fried rice).

Dinner was almost always Cantonese, because my father has rather conservative culinary tastes. However, because our maid has been in charge of the dinner menu for more than two decades, there was bound to be nights where she would reach her wit’s end for what to put on the table, and lean on the cuisine of her home country to hold the line.

I first came across chicken tocino during one such evening when it made its debut, when our maid adapted the traditional tocino cure into a sticky glaze for chicken thighs made right in the frying pan. My father’s silent objection notwithstanding, the sweet and sour combo was a winner for serving with rice.

I had just moved to a place with a patio then, and I was itching to try my hand at grilling. It was immediately obvious that tocino and charcoal is going to be a match made in heaven. It would take some planning, though – charcoal burns for a good long while, and it would be a shame to let all that heat go to waste.

I made some adaptations to make the grill-out a more meal-prep friendly affair. Roasting sweet potatoes next to the coals was an obvious choice, so that’s the carbs sorted out. I also reasoned that it would be more efficient to steam a large amount of vegetables in foil packets than to place them directly over the coals.

It did mean making some sacrifices, like giving up on delicious char on the fajita vegetables, but I was willing to take that tradeoff. Plus, mushrooms taste good however they are cooked, and being steamed in a foil packet with garlic and butter is no exception.

Dramatis Personae

Chicken

Thighs are much more forgiving than white meat, and stay juicy even after refrigerating and reheating. Having said that, nothing keeps you from using chicken breasts (grilling whole tenderloins would save you a lot of knife work, for example).

I cut them into small pieces, because I’ve consistently found it hard to cook chicken on the grill. Unlike beef, chicken is not tasty when medium rare, and it takes a degree of skill in managing the heat from a charcoal fire to make sure they cook through by the time they get a nice char.

Skewers

Whenever I skewer something for the grill, the food has an annoying habit of spinning around the stick when I try to turn them. I tried to get around this by skewering each piece twice, so that their position remains fixed in relation to all the other pieces.

It worked, but it was a lot of work to do that for 2lbs of chicken. Make your own decision on how to skewer them, if at all. Maybe you’re a grill-master who can manage whole thighs – if so, hats off to you and could you please share your arcane secrets with me?

Pineapple juice

Essential for sweetness, acidity and fruitiness. Pineapples have enzymes that theoretically act as a tenderiser for meat, but I doubt the can of industrial juice product I used has much pineapple in it if at all. If you grate your own fresh pineapple instead, don’t marinade the chicken for any longer than overnight or the texture will suffer from being broken down too much.

Garlic

Thank goodness for the garlic paste that the Nepali grocer near me has in its stock. I got it during the same trip that I got the lentils for my beef and lentil chili earlier, and I’ve been using it in marinades ever since. It’s a bit sour from the acidity regulators in the jar, but that’s ok because there’s ketchup in this marinade anyway.

Of course, finely minced garlic would work just as well. Making your own garlic paste isn’t difficult with a food processor either, but then there’s the cleanup.

Other marinade ingredients

Ketchup for acidity and sweetness, but also for a wonderful red colour. You’d also want a significant amount of sugar (tocino is about 50:50 o the sweet-savoury scale), lots of black pepper and soy sauce to taste. Salt is also a reasonable addition, in place of the soy sauce.

Sweet potatoes

These are at least half the reason to cook with coals. Scrub the skins thoroughly, wrap them with some oiled aluminium foil and stick them by the fire, and they slowly turn into these vibrant, orange coloured tubers of smoky sweetness.

And then there’s the texture – the flesh becomes beautifully soft and creamy, and if you’re lucky some of the juices loaded with natural sugar will caramelise into a crispy layer on the skin.

As a slow-digesting carb source that’s also packed with fiber and vitamins, there are few other things more nourishing and satisfying than coal-roasted sweet potatoes. I’m making plenty of extra and basing my meal prep later this week with them.

Veggie foil packets

Oil the inside of aluminium foil to prevent sticking, lay in vegetables with seasonings of choice and crimp tightly to trap any steam coming off of the vegetables as they get heated up by the grill.

I tried a fajita mix of julienned bell peppers and onions, and shredded cabbage. They ended up cooked, and I can’t say more about them. Which was fine, because that’s all I ever expected from them. Expectation management is the key to happiness.

The mixed mushrooms were a hit, and that was no surprise. Mushrooms in foil packets with jarred minced garlic, salt and pepper and a generous amount of butter is a staple of childhood school outings and family cook-outs. If this sounds new to you, I sincerely wish you try this out the next time you grill. 10/10 would recommend.

Executive summary

1. The night before, cut chicken thighs into small pieces and mix well with marinade ingredients. Keep in the fridge until ready to grill.
2. Get the charcoal grill going. While waiting for the coals to burn down, skewer the chicken, construct the veggie foil packets and wrap sweet potatoes with foil.
3. Arrange sweet potatoes around the hot coals, turning them every 10 minutes or so.
4. In the meantime, grill chicken skewers until the meat is cooked through and lightly charred. Place veggie foil packets on the side and allow to steam for a few minutes.
5. Check the sweet potatoes every now and then, for example in between batches of skewers. When they feel soft when gripped by a pair of tongs, set them aside and allow to cool.
6. Assemble and serve. Be delighted that there are plenty of leftovers to feast on throughout the week.

Play by Play

Throw all the marinade ingredients and chicken into a bowl and give it a good mix. Leave them in the fridge to mingle and make friends overnight.

Now we’re all skewered and ready to go – notice how I double-teamed each piece to prevent them from rotating around when I flip them. I did not have enough metal skewers to do the job, so bamboo skewers stepped in to fill the gap. Even with a long soak in water, a lot of the bamboo skewers ended up catching fire despite my best efforts.

Foil packets are prepped and ready to go. Fajita vegetables, shredded cabbage, sweet potatoes and a packet of mushrooms that’s covered up in the back. Let me get you a better view …

Simple but effective. Mixed mushrooms with a bit of butter, some salt and dollops of jarred garlic. This will become umami heaven.

Sweet potatoes surrounding the coals, foil packets and chicken on top. The skewer on the left there was starting to burn even though the inside is undercooked, so I took it off of direct heat to save it.

Chicken coming along nicely.

The mushrooms have absorbed all the buttery, savoury, garlicky goodness. Meanwhile, the fajita vegetables are done, but since they didn’t get any direct heat and because they were left to steam inside the packet, they didn’t develop any char or caramelisation. Nevertheless, the foil packet served its purpose.

Very enticing. Although, as good as the chicken looks, I might be more excited about the sweet potato than anything else on this platter.

Looking forward to the leftovers!

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