Hawaiian Huli Huli Chicken

Adapted slightly from Hawaii Magazine

I’m getting ready for the luau later this month and oh man, is it fun “testing” out these Hawaiian recipes! Being landlocked in the midwest means I can’t serve some of the more exotic Hawaiian dishes, even if I could somehow get my hands on the ingredients. I figure that’s probably just as well, though,  because, while I’m sure that a few people would appreciate the more adventurous and strange things you might see at a real luau, everyone will fricking LOVE this chicken. It is seriously the best barbecue chicken I think I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve had a lot of pretty dang good BBQ chicken in my time!

Ernest Morgado of Pacific Poultry in Hawaii was the one who created this tantalizing Teriyaki-style grilled chicken. The chicken was marinated in sauce, then cooked between two grills. The grills were literally flipped over in the making of the chicken, and since huli is the Hawaiian word for turn, it came to be known as Huli-Huli Chicken. Morgado trademarked his sauce, so nobody really knows exactly what’s in it, but according to Hawaii Magazine, this recipe is pretty close.

I altered the recipe a little–instead of marinading the chicken in the sauce, I used a yogurt marinade, and then I just basted the heck out of the chicken while it was cooking. Why did I do such a thing? Well, you see, yogurt has a magic way of making chicken stay perfectly tender and juicy when you grill it. And by basting it with the sauce so much, all the flavor from that amazing sauce still got very nicely infused into the chicken. And in case you just can’t get enough of that flavorful sauce, I recommend serving a little sauce on the side with the chicken, so you can dip or slather your chicken in it, and let a little sauce soak into the rice too, you know, for extra flavor.

Hawaiian Huli Huli Chicken

• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 30 minutes
• Total Time: 2 hours 45 minutes
• Yield: 7 pieces of chicken 1x

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

To moisten the chicken:

• 16 oz. plain nonfat yogurt
• 1 – 2 cups milk
• 7 chicken pieces (about 1/2 of a chicken)

The Huli Huli sauce for glazing the chicken:

• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 Tablespoons white wine
• 1 Tablespoon brandy
• 1 Tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 chunk of ginger root, shredded
• 3 – 4 cloves garlic, peeled & chopped
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon Sriracha
• Juice of 1/2 of a lemon

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Instructions

1. Put the yogurt and milk in a bowl and whisk to combine. Put the chicken in a container and pour the yogurt mixture over it. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, rotating the chicken if needed to make sure all the pieces get a good bath in the yogurt.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce by whisking all the sauce ingredients together. Pour about half the sauce into a bowl for serving time.
3. Heat up the grill so there is a “hot” side and a cooler side. Rinse off the yogurt from the chicken and set it on the grill. Baste with the sauce. Cover and let cook until the bottom is starting to brown a little, then turn and baste the other side.
4. Once the other side is browned, move the chicken to the cooler side of the grill, turning over and basting it again. Keep turning and basting every few minutes until the chicken is fully cooked.
5. Serve with fried rice (or just rice) and veggies, with additional sauce on the side for drizzling over and/or dipping the chicken bits.

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Notes

For gluten free recipe, make sure you use gluten free sauces. Regular soy sauce is not gluten free.

RECIPE SOURCE: http://www.sumptuousspoonfuls.com/

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… I can’t help but wonder, though, why didn’t they just flip the chicken over, rather than flipping the grills over?

This recipe was shared at Foodie Friends Friday, Gluten Free Friday, What to Do Weekends, Sunday Food & Fitness and Pretty Pintastic Party.