Harold Makes Grilled Chicken Inasal

[knife chopping on board]

I gotta show off the knife skills.

I have real nice knife skills.

[upbeat music]

What up, what up, you boys? I'm Harold, AKA Uncle Harold.

Inasal chicken is such an iconic barbecue chicken

in Filipino culture.

It's done for birthday parties,

somebody's Sunday afternoon, and you can inasal anything.

Inasal is just a 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 gonna enjoy making this on your own.

What we're gonna 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.

We're 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 wanna really take it right there.

That looks good. We're gonna go in 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,

it'll give it that crunch that you kind of need.

I'm gonna go ahead and peel the carrots.

It's really gonna give it a nice color too.

Well, those are the tips, like I said,

we have a nice texture.

We're gonna pull the macaroni up, 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 gonna give it a little bit more acidity,

and also it's gonna cut through all that fat.

And it's just a little technique

they've been doing in a while, for such a long time.

So I said, [bleep] it.

Let me try it out.

You just put this to the side and let it cool down.

And so we'll go right into celery next.

It's gonna go over here.

And then, my scallions.

I mixed 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 this is 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 wanna taste along the way.

So you wanna see where this is at.

Mmm, it's good.

The vinegar is really nice with that acid,

especially with the heavy cream and the mayo.

Oh, man.

Gonna plastic wrap this and cool it down.

[chill music]

All right, so now we're gonna go right into

marinating the chicken.

First and foremost, ginger and garlic is the base

for anything you marinate.

I don't care what nobody says.

You got to use these things, but right?

So a little piece of ginger.

We're gonna take a little spoon

and we're gonna 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, 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 a small dice situation.

Put it into this bowl.

Then, take about three cloves of garlic.

Just gonna push down a little bit

because you don't want this to burn on the grill.

I'm gonna go ahead and get it kind of mush.

[knife chopping on board]

And so next, we're gonna prep the lemongrass.

Take the outer skin off.

It's commonly 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.

[knife banging]

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.

And here.

Okay, next, we're gonna 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 by hand.

So this is made with love right here, eh?

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 calamansi is a little bit higher.

We have a lot of fats in our food and vinegar,

and the sourness kind of elevates the product

and elevates the food.

You saw that, Ele-bate?

That's the Filipino [bleep] 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 have the whole building smell like inasal 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 gonna put Sprite in this dish.

So we put a little bit of Sprite.

That helps carbonate and also tenderizes the meat.

We're only using about a cup's 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.

Gonna put her right in, close this thing,

let the air out and...

[liquid sloshing]

mix it up.

[liquid sloshing]

Oh, look at that.

How beautiful that looks.

I'm 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 her 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.

And I'll put it down here real quick.

You want to go ahead and pat this thing dry.

It helps with the crispness of the skin

and you get a nice even grill mark on their situation.

So, I've already oiled the grill itself

and we're gonna oil a little bit more the chicken.

Lay down the chicken skin side first.

So in the restaurant business,

you want to get that nice and colorful

and grilled marked on.

And then that will be your side

that you'll be presenting to the customer.

So, that's always been the way I've tried on it.

Well, this side, when you flip it,

it'll be ready to go for you.

Oh yeah, baby.

Find the char, finding the sugars,

smelling the vinegar itself.

That's barbecue.

You're crosshatching it.

You get these nice grill marks and you just cross it.

So once a side gets a nice char,

place it on the sheet tray, and turn this off,

and then we're gonna go ahead and make our annatto butter.

It's just a great way to give nice color to the chicken

and also gives it a great nutty flavor.

Now annatto is a annatto seed.

In Mexican culture, it's achiote.

For us in the Philippines,

we use this a lot to color our food and also,

annatto seed gives it a nice, nutty,

kind of beurre noisette flavor profile to these dishes.

So what we're gonna do is,

we're gonna create a butter.

First, we're gonna have some room temperature butter.

A little bit of the annatto oil, a little bit of salt.

And then these beautiful calamansi,

the citrus that we spoke about earlier, fresh.

We're gonna go ahead and squeeze it.

We'll have to mix this.

I've never cooked Filipino food like this

in 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 trajectory

is kind of exciting and also a little bit daunting

because a lot of people are gonna be looking at it

and being able to, you know,

judge kind of what you're doing and stuff like that.

So, we've 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 gonna have to put it in the oven

at 350 degrees for about 35, 40 minutes.

[groovy music]

Oh [bleeps] I forgot, I forgot my cake tester.

You got a cake test? I've got a cake tester.

Show you this little trick.

[Producer] Cool.

It's called burn your lip trick.

Okay. [Harold laughs]

So now we're gonna go and check on our chicken.

Woo!

Usually you can check it with your probe thermometer at 165,

but in a professional kitchens,

we use a thing called the cake tester, like this.

This is what the pastry chefs used 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 steaks.

So what would you do is you just

stick it inside of your, of your steak.

You would feel it under your lip or in your hand.

Scorching hot, it's well done,

like a medium heat is 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 a chicken, right?

What you want to do is for chicken thighs,

the cartilage connecting with the thigh

and the chicken leg itself. You just want to hit that

and then you wanna feel it.

That's it, it's hot as [bleeps]

so 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 gonna do is grab the mac salad.

It's been cooling this whole time.

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 annatto butter juice right there.

And then we're gonna hit it with a little bit of

Maldon salt,

salt kernels.

I love it, I love it.

I always finish everything with it.

Even pastries, huh?

I'm a three-piece man kind of person.

Oh my goodness.

That's it.

Inasal chicken with macaroni salad.

This is the best part of the day, right?

You get to taste your hard work.

First, I want to taste macaroni.

No, matter of fact, I'm getting a piece of chicken

'cause my mouth is watering.

Mmm.

That is good as [bleeps].

I'm not saying that 'cause I made it, 'cause it's so juicy.

The annatto butter, it's amazing.

Let's try it with our mac salad.

Mmm, good texture from the vegetables.

The mayo and the vinegar, wow.

Can really taste the vinegar

and it cuts through all that fat.

It compliments 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 [bleeps].

South Bronx all day.

Peace.

[groovy music]