Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com. Today, we’re doing some delicious grilled chicken thighs with fennel, garlic and orange. And what happened here is my heart said Italian sausage and my brain said no be good, grill some chicken thighs. So what I did here you'll see all this ingredients in a minute. I took the ingredients, the spices that we use if I was making a sweet Italian sausage and I'm going to marinate my chicken thighs and then grill them.
So, it’s kind of con-air compromise here so let me show you what I put in here. This is some orange zest. So the zest is about half an orange and I'm going to mince that up. And in a mortar and pestle, I'm going to grind all these delicious ingredients just like I make in sausage but I'm going to use them as a marinade for some chicken. So, there’s a couple of tablespoons of whole fennel seed, very important. You got to use the whole fennel seed and nothing ground here. I'm going to smash that with a mortar and pestle until I don’t know looks like that, it’s kind of about halfway smash.
All right, I'm going to add my garlic that’s a lot of garlic. By the way of course all the amounts are on the side as well as the fascinating article of how this dish came to be. So, I'm going to add my orange zest to the fennel and the garlic and I'm going to give that a good mashing. Now, you'll see as you—the more ingredients you have in here and that’s why again I didn’t powder that fennel. The coarseness really makes it easy to grind the other ingredients. So, when I got to that stage, I added my Italian seasoning and of course it’s a time lap so it took about five minutes of pounding there.
A good amount of black pepper and some sweet paprika that you know most of them may get in there. Let me clean that up. All right so what we’re going to do is we’re going to add this seasoned chicken, we’re going to let it marinate it and then we’re going to grill it. Now, I was going to use this just as is but then I looked at it and I said you know what that thing looks like it needs to be mashed a little more. So, I give it another minute or so and then I was ready to marinade. There's my package of chicken thighs, boneless skinless, it’s about 10 thighs in there. I don’t know how many pounds that is, I’ve threw the package away.
All right probably two to three pounds. I'm going to squeeze over half an orange and about a teaspoon and a half, maybe a tablespoon of olive oil and I'm going to add my spice mixture. Now again to reiterate, the seasoning here is really common. If I was making pork sausage, I would have basically use the same ingredients but I didn’t, you know, I lied it. I didn’t want to make pork sausage but again I have chicken thigh. So, I'm trying to get the same flavors with just a delicious traditional Italian sweet sausage with a fennel and the garlic but using a different protein.
So, that’s going to go in the fridge for at least two hours all right. There's a lot of flavor in there but you got let it have time to get into that chicken. Overnight is even better. All right two hours in minimum, minimum, five six hours eight hours, overnight like I say even better alright you notice there was no salt in that mix. So, there's a nice tablespoon and a half of kosher salt. I'm going to sprinkle that liberally over the chicken. So, you don’t marinade usually with salt because that draws out the water so that’s why you usually see people salting things right before it goes out on a grill.
So, I'm not going to show you the other side but I turned this over, I salted both sides and there is my perfectly white—and I'm ready to grill. So, these are going to go about six seven eight minutes per side you know when they're done I can't help with you that. All right! Now, if you want to see how to make that grate, the grates to that grill nonstick check out the—chicken video. I sprayed it with some nonstick canola oil environmentally safe non-stick canola oil and it really does make a difference.
So, that whole package fit on there and that looks pretty tight but as they cook, they shrink up a little bit. There's some shrinkage and like I say seven minutes or so I turned them over and you can't really see from the light outside but they're actually a beautiful kind of rusty red color because of the paprika but the smell, smelled exactly like grilled Italian sausage. Why? Because they use the same ingredients and there we are back inside with our finished plate. Why does it look slightly blurry? Because of the heat waves.
All right but there's a close up looks delicious smells even better and tasted unbelievable and there's my beautiful pink oregano blossoms that’s why you got to grow your own herbs. Come on, plant some oregano. Go to the site. Read how I made chicken taste like Italian sausage and most of all enjoy.
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