**The Art of Grilling Chicken to Perfection**

In this article, we will delve into the world of grilling chicken and explore the techniques and tips that can make all the difference in achieving perfectly cooked, flavorful dishes. As a seasoned chef, I've had my fair share of trial and error when it comes to cooking chicken on the grill. But with practice and patience, you too can master the art of grilling chicken like a pro.

**Preparation is Key**

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of grilling chicken, let's talk about preparation. It all starts with oiling the grill itself. I've already done that, but I'm going to add a little more oil to the chicken as well. "Oil this side when you flip it," I always say. This ensures that the chicken gets a nice, even coating of oil and helps to prevent sticking. And when you're dealing with delicate flavors like those found in Filipino cuisine, every detail counts.

**The Importance of Maillard Reaction**

Next up is the Maillard reaction – that magical process where amino acids and reducing sugars come together to create new flavor compounds and browning. This is where the magic happens, folks! "You want to get that nice, colorful grill mark," I say. And with a little practice, you too can achieve those perfect, crosshatched lines on your chicken. Just remember to flip it when it's done – that's the key to getting that beautiful, caramelized crust.

**Natto Butter: The Secret to Flavor**

Now, let's talk about natto butter – the secret ingredient that takes our grilled chicken to the next level. "This is a great way to give a nice color to the chicken," I explain. And it's not just about aesthetics; the natto seed adds a nutty flavor profile that complements the dish perfectly. To make our natto butter, we'll combine room-temperature butter with a little bit of natto oil and salt. But wait – there's more! We'll also add some beautiful calamansi, or Filipino lime juice, to give it an extra boost of flavor.

**The Cake Tester: A Professional Chef's Secret**

As any professional chef will tell you, the cake tester is a tool that every kitchen should have. It may seem like a novelty item, but trust me – it's a game-changer. When it comes to cooking chicken, a good cake tester can help you determine if it's cooked to perfection or not. Simply stick it into the thickest part of the thigh and check for doneness. If it's hot, it's done! And that's exactly what I've done with our grilled chicken thighs.

**Finishing Touches: Mac Salad and Natto Butter**

Now that our chicken is cooked to perfection, let's talk about the finishing touches. Our mac salad has been cooling on the side – a little mix of mayo, cream, and solidified goodness that complements our chicken perfectly. And when it comes time to plate, I like to add a sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of calamansi juice to bring out the flavors.

**Tasting is the Best Part**

Finally, we come to the most important part of all – tasting! There's nothing quite like taking a bite of something you've cooked yourself, feeling proud of what you've created. And let me tell you, our grilled chicken with mac salad is definitely worth savoring. The natto butter adds an incredible depth of flavor, while the calamansi juice provides a nice tanginess to balance it out.

**A Lesson in Patience and Practice**

As I sit down to enjoy my perfectly grilled chicken, I'm reminded that cooking is all about patience and practice. It takes time to develop those skills, but trust me – it's worth it. Whether you're a seasoned chef or just starting out, remember to always take your time and never be afraid to experiment. And most importantly, never forget where you come from – in the kitchen, as well as in life.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni gotta show off the next skills relax knife skills whatever that's your boy chef harold aka uncle harold and i saw chicken is such an iconic barbecue chicken filipino culture it's done for birthday parties somebody's sunday afternoon and you can install anything in this style it's just the marinade and the one special ingredient is soda and then the macaroni salad itself is a play on hawaiian style macaroni salad i think you're really going to enjoy making this at your own what we're going to do first is cook our pasta we're just using elbow macaroni which is super fast to cook so we have our boiling pasta water here just gonna add a little bit of salt and put the macaroni right in this is gonna take probably five to eight minutes since it's such a small pasta i'm gonna give it a little stir so it don't get stuck in the bottom here so while we're waiting on this we're gonna go ahead and create our mayo mix add a little bit of cream a half teaspoon of salt black pepper a little bit of brown sugar just to give it a little bit of sweetness and it might look a little wet but the texture is gonna really come together here and as you can see got this nice sheen to it and that's where you want to really take it right there that looks good we're going to go ahead and chop up some stuff so what makes a great macaroni salad for me is raw vegetables is key the macaroni is already soft with this kind of wet mayo mix but with the vegetables i'll give it that crunch that you kind of need i'm going to go ahead and peel the carrot it's really going to give it a nice color too but also at the same time like we said leave a nice texture i'm going to go ahead and pull the macaroni out right into the bowl and then while it's in here add your vinegar one secret that a grandma had told me about macaroni salad was let it sit in vinegar after you cook it this is going to give it a little bit more acidity and also it's going to cut through all that fat and it's just a little technique i've been doing in her wife for such a long time so i said it let me try it out you just put this to the side let it cool down so we'll go right into celery next then my scallions i mix all the white and the green don't have to do it too thin you still need that texture and it looks good too when you mix it together so this is your vegetables and just all the stuff you need to get together for the macaroni salad go ahead and take our mayo mix add our vegetables also this simple macaroni salad you can't mess this up make sure that macaroni and the vegetables are all covered with our dressing and always want to taste along the way so you want to see where this is at the vinegar is really nice with that acid especially with the heavy cream in the mayo oh man plastic wrap this and cool it down all right so now we're going to go right into marinating the chicken first and foremost ginger and garlic is the base for anything in marina i don't care what nobody says you got to use these things all right so a little piece of ginger we're going to take a little spoon and we're going to go ahead and peel it my mom my grandma used to make me do all this stuff they were so lazy to do this for themselves all right so if you ever have kids and you want to make food you just got to make them do all the mundane things and then they become chefs ginger has a nice spice to it especially fresh ginger and it creates such a great aromatic smell to anything you kind of put together kind of small dye situation put it in this bowl then take about three cloves of garlic i'm just going to push down a little bit because you don't want this to burn on the grill i'm going to go ahead and get it kind of mush and so next we're going to prep the lemongrass take the outer skin off is primarily used in southeast asian food to give it aromatic lemon flavor the lemongrass itself is very woody so you can really just use kind of the upper part and the way you kind of break it down is you take the back of your knife and you kind of just smash it to kind of open it up get all the aromatics out of it and it hits whatever product you're working with a lot faster right here okay next we're going to go ahead and make our mix first things first we'll put a little bit of brown sugar some salt a little black pepper and one of our favorite condiments in the philippines coconut vinegar it's amazing flavor profile and then one of our culinary producers got us fresh calamansi juice squeezed it by hand so this is made with love right here a little bit of that in here so calamansi is a citrus fruit from the philippines let's just say it's like a lime with like a meyer lemon situation mix and we use it for everything that's kind of the citrus for the philippines the acidity in kalamazoo is a little bit higher we have a lot of fats in our food and vinegar and that sourness kind of elevates the product and levels the food you saw that elevate that's a filipino just came out you see that so yeah you can use regular lime or regular vinegar for this recipe itself but i think the reason why we're using this now is for me it's super nostalgic to like have these smells and have the charring of meat which just reminds me of like barbecues back in the philippines and barbecues that my father used to throw when we used to live in the south bronx and and have the whole building smell like in a style chicken and everybody's wondering can we eat and my father says no and then secret weapon which hopefully all filipino moms are watching yes we are going to put sprite in this dish so we put a little bit of sprite that helps carbonate and also tenderizes the meat we use about a cups worth and the sugars in this also helps give it an extra flavor profile in the marinade look at this thing you can marinate anything with this i like to use chicken quarters i love the flavor of dark meat and i love the juiciness that comes out when you grill it with this marinade i'm gonna put it right in close this thing the air out and mix it up look at that how beautiful that looks we're gonna leave this in here for a day if you want to but i'm starving so i'm gonna let this rock for like 20 minutes and then we're gonna put it right on the grill this is gonna be the best grilled chicken you're ever gonna have now we're gonna go into the grilling the most important part about grilling is you have to have a nice hot grill pan to get the great sear marks that you need so this whiff of marinade is gonna hit you in the face yup put it down here real quick you want to go ahead and pat this thing dry it helps with the crispiness of the skin and you get a nice even grill mark on your situation so i've already oiled the grill itself and i'm going to oil a little bit more of the chicken lay it on the chicken skin side first so in the restaurant business you want to get that nice and colorful and grill marked on and then that'll be your side that you'll be presenting to the customer so that's always been the way i've tried done it oil this side when you flip it it'll be ready to go for you oh yeah baby trying to char smelling the sugars smelling the vinegar itself yeah that's barbecue you're cross-hatching it you get this nice grill marks and you just cross it so once the side gets a nice char place it on the sheet tray and turn this off and then we're going to go ahead and make our natto butter it's just a great way to give a nice color to the chicken and also gives it a great nutty flavor now natto is a natto seed the mexican culture is achiote for us in the philippines we use this a lot to color our food and also natto seed gives it a nice nutty kind of asset flavor profile to these dishes so what we're going to do is we're going to create a butter first we're going to have some room temperature butter a little bit of the natto oil a little bit of salt and then these uh beautiful calamansi the citrus that we spoke about earlier fresh i'm gonna go ahead and squeeze it go ahead and mix this i've never cooked filipino food like this in uh my professional career having a chance to put filipino food on the map and being able to do these things on you know bon appetit platform but also on my own career and trajectory is it's kind of exciting and also a little bit uh daunting because a lot of people are going to be looking at it and being able to you know judge kind of what you're doing and stuff like that so we got to give praises to the elders you know for passing out their knowledge and passing it down to us and making sure that you know we're doing all the right things so we're going to put in the oven at 350 degrees for about 35-40 minutes oh i forgot my cake tester you got a cake test i'll show you this little trick it's called burn your lip check okay so now we're going to go and check on our chicken usually you can check with your probe thermometer at 165 but in professional kitchens we use a thing called cake tester like this this is what the pastry chefs use to stick into cakes to see if if it's done or not if there's any kind of wetness on the on the batter itself so the savory side took it from them and then we started using it for our steak so what would you do is you just stick it inside of your uh of your steak you would feel it under your lip or in your hand scorching hot it's well done like a medium heat it's medium and then like a mid-rare it's kind of like to a body temperature so we're gonna do the same thing with our chicken right so what you want to do is for chicken thighs the carly's connecting with the thigh and the chicken leg itself you just want to hit that and then you want to feel it that's it's hot as that means it's cooked all the way through and the thigh too yeah that's hot all these chickens are ready awesome what i'm also going to do is grab the mac salad it's been cooling this whole time i'm going to give it a little mix the mayo and the cream solidified a little bit and it's covering every single kernel of macaroni grab your chicken and i like to save that i'm not the battered juice right there and then we're going to hit it with a little bit of hold on salt salt kernels i love it i love it i always finish everything with that even pastries huh i'm a three-piece man kind of person oh my goodness that's it and i saw chicken with macaroni salad this is the best part of the day all right you have to taste your hard work first i want to taste the macaroni no matter of fact i'm getting a piece of chicken my mouth is watering um that's good i'm not saying that because i made it because uh it's so juicy the natto butter is amazing let's try it with the mac salad mmm good texture from the vegetables the mayo and the vinegar wow you can really taste the vinegar and it cuts through all that fat it complements the chicken and it's such a great balanced dish this right here you cook with love and you cook with flavor people are gonna love it like we always say never forget where you come from otherwise you become a south bronx all dayi gotta show off the next skills relax knife skills whatever that's your boy chef harold aka uncle harold and i saw chicken is such an iconic barbecue chicken filipino culture it's done for birthday parties somebody's sunday afternoon and you can install anything in this style it's just the marinade and the one special ingredient is soda and then the macaroni salad itself is a play on hawaiian style macaroni salad i think you're really going to enjoy making this at your own what we're going to do first is cook our pasta we're just using elbow macaroni which is super fast to cook so we have our boiling pasta water here just gonna add a little bit of salt and put the macaroni right in this is gonna take probably five to eight minutes since it's such a small pasta i'm gonna give it a little stir so it don't get stuck in the bottom here so while we're waiting on this we're gonna go ahead and create our mayo mix add a little bit of cream a half teaspoon of salt black pepper a little bit of brown sugar just to give it a little bit of sweetness and it might look a little wet but the texture is gonna really come together here and as you can see got this nice sheen to it and that's where you want to really take it right there that looks good we're going to go ahead and chop up some stuff so what makes a great macaroni salad for me is raw vegetables is key the macaroni is already soft with this kind of wet mayo mix but with the vegetables i'll give it that crunch that you kind of need i'm going to go ahead and peel the carrot it's really going to give it a nice color too but also at the same time like we said leave a nice texture i'm going to go ahead and pull the macaroni out right into the bowl and then while it's in here add your vinegar one secret that a grandma had told me about macaroni salad was let it sit in vinegar after you cook it this is going to give it a little bit more acidity and also it's going to cut through all that fat and it's just a little technique i've been doing in her wife for such a long time so i said it let me try it out you just put this to the side let it cool down so we'll go right into celery next then my scallions i mix all the white and the green don't have to do it too thin you still need that texture and it looks good too when you mix it together so this is your vegetables and just all the stuff you need to get together for the macaroni salad go ahead and take our mayo mix add our vegetables also this simple macaroni salad you can't mess this up make sure that macaroni and the vegetables are all covered with our dressing and always want to taste along the way so you want to see where this is at the vinegar is really nice with that acid especially with the heavy cream in the mayo oh man plastic wrap this and cool it down all right so now we're going to go right into marinating the chicken first and foremost ginger and garlic is the base for anything in marina i don't care what nobody says you got to use these things all right so a little piece of ginger we're going to take a little spoon and we're going to go ahead and peel it my mom my grandma used to make me do all this stuff they were so lazy to do this for themselves all right so if you ever have kids and you want to make food you just got to make them do all the mundane things and then they become chefs ginger has a nice spice to it especially fresh ginger and it creates such a great aromatic smell to anything you kind of put together kind of small dye situation put it in this bowl then take about three cloves of garlic i'm just going to push down a little bit because you don't want this to burn on the grill i'm going to go ahead and get it kind of mush and so next we're going to prep the lemongrass take the outer skin off is primarily used in southeast asian food to give it aromatic lemon flavor the lemongrass itself is very woody so you can really just use kind of the upper part and the way you kind of break it down is you take the back of your knife and you kind of just smash it to kind of open it up get all the aromatics out of it and it hits whatever product you're working with a lot faster right here okay next we're going to go ahead and make our mix first things first we'll put a little bit of brown sugar some salt a little black pepper and one of our favorite condiments in the philippines coconut vinegar it's amazing flavor profile and then one of our culinary producers got us fresh calamansi juice squeezed it by hand so this is made with love right here a little bit of that in here so calamansi is a citrus fruit from the philippines let's just say it's like a lime with like a meyer lemon situation mix and we use it for everything that's kind of the citrus for the philippines the acidity in kalamazoo is a little bit higher we have a lot of fats in our food and vinegar and that sourness kind of elevates the product and levels the food you saw that elevate that's a filipino just came out you see that so yeah you can use regular lime or regular vinegar for this recipe itself but i think the reason why we're using this now is for me it's super nostalgic to like have these smells and have the charring of meat which just reminds me of like barbecues back in the philippines and barbecues that my father used to throw when we used to live in the south bronx and and have the whole building smell like in a style chicken and everybody's wondering can we eat and my father says no and then secret weapon which hopefully all filipino moms are watching yes we are going to put sprite in this dish so we put a little bit of sprite that helps carbonate and also tenderizes the meat we use about a cups worth and the sugars in this also helps give it an extra flavor profile in the marinade look at this thing you can marinate anything with this i like to use chicken quarters i love the flavor of dark meat and i love the juiciness that comes out when you grill it with this marinade i'm gonna put it right in close this thing the air out and mix it up look at that how beautiful that looks we're gonna leave this in here for a day if you want to but i'm starving so i'm gonna let this rock for like 20 minutes and then we're gonna put it right on the grill this is gonna be the best grilled chicken you're ever gonna have now we're gonna go into the grilling the most important part about grilling is you have to have a nice hot grill pan to get the great sear marks that you need so this whiff of marinade is gonna hit you in the face yup put it down here real quick you want to go ahead and pat this thing dry it helps with the crispiness of the skin and you get a nice even grill mark on your situation so i've already oiled the grill itself and i'm going to oil a little bit more of the chicken lay it on the chicken skin side first so in the restaurant business you want to get that nice and colorful and grill marked on and then that'll be your side that you'll be presenting to the customer so that's always been the way i've tried done it oil this side when you flip it it'll be ready to go for you oh yeah baby trying to char smelling the sugars smelling the vinegar itself yeah that's barbecue you're cross-hatching it you get this nice grill marks and you just cross it so once the side gets a nice char place it on the sheet tray and turn this off and then we're going to go ahead and make our natto butter it's just a great way to give a nice color to the chicken and also gives it a great nutty flavor now natto is a natto seed the mexican culture is achiote for us in the philippines we use this a lot to color our food and also natto seed gives it a nice nutty kind of asset flavor profile to these dishes so what we're going to do is we're going to create a butter first we're going to have some room temperature butter a little bit of the natto oil a little bit of salt and then these uh beautiful calamansi the citrus that we spoke about earlier fresh i'm gonna go ahead and squeeze it go ahead and mix this i've never cooked filipino food like this in uh my professional career having a chance to put filipino food on the map and being able to do these things on you know bon appetit platform but also on my own career and trajectory is it's kind of exciting and also a little bit uh daunting because a lot of people are going to be looking at it and being able to you know judge kind of what you're doing and stuff like that so we got to give praises to the elders you know for passing out their knowledge and passing it down to us and making sure that you know we're doing all the right things so we're going to put in the oven at 350 degrees for about 35-40 minutes oh i forgot my cake tester you got a cake test i'll show you this little trick it's called burn your lip check okay so now we're going to go and check on our chicken usually you can check with your probe thermometer at 165 but in professional kitchens we use a thing called cake tester like this this is what the pastry chefs use to stick into cakes to see if if it's done or not if there's any kind of wetness on the on the batter itself so the savory side took it from them and then we started using it for our steak so what would you do is you just stick it inside of your uh of your steak you would feel it under your lip or in your hand scorching hot it's well done like a medium heat it's medium and then like a mid-rare it's kind of like to a body temperature so we're gonna do the same thing with our chicken right so what you want to do is for chicken thighs the carly's connecting with the thigh and the chicken leg itself you just want to hit that and then you want to feel it that's it's hot as that means it's cooked all the way through and the thigh too yeah that's hot all these chickens are ready awesome what i'm also going to do is grab the mac salad it's been cooling this whole time i'm going to give it a little mix the mayo and the cream solidified a little bit and it's covering every single kernel of macaroni grab your chicken and i like to save that i'm not the battered juice right there and then we're going to hit it with a little bit of hold on salt salt kernels i love it i love it i always finish everything with that even pastries huh i'm a three-piece man kind of person oh my goodness that's it and i saw chicken with macaroni salad this is the best part of the day all right you have to taste your hard work first i want to taste the macaroni no matter of fact i'm getting a piece of chicken my mouth is watering um that's good i'm not saying that because i made it because uh it's so juicy the natto butter is amazing let's try it with the mac salad mmm good texture from the vegetables the mayo and the vinegar wow you can really taste the vinegar and it cuts through all that fat it complements the chicken and it's such a great balanced dish this right here you cook with love and you cook with flavor people are gonna love it like we always say never forget where you come from otherwise you become a south bronx all day\n"