Thai Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce

Recipe Note

Recipe FAQ

Why use both coconut cream and coconut milk — one in the marinade, one in the sauce?

Coconut cream and coconut milk are the same product at different concentrations — coconut cream has most of the water removed, leaving a much richer, fattier liquid. In the marinade, the fat in the coconut cream carries the curry paste, ginger, and garlic compounds into the chicken during the overnight soak, tenderizing the meat and seasoning it deeply. In the peanut sauce, the less concentrated coconut milk thins the peanut butter to a pourable, brushable consistency without making the sauce so rich it becomes cloying. Using coconut cream in the sauce would produce a much heavier, less balanced result.

Why use Smoke on Wheels Pork Marinade in a chicken satay?

Smoke on Wheels Pork Marinade is a savory, slightly sweet liquid marinade with a backbone of soy, Worcestershire, and spices — it functions as a seasoning amplifier and tenderizer in this recipe rather than as a pork-specific flavor. Combined with the red curry paste, tamarind, and fresh ginger, its savory umami note deepens the overall marinade flavor in a way that plain soy sauce would, but with more complexity. The tenderizing enzymes in the marinade also help the chicken stay juicy through the high-heat griddle sear. Substituting regular BBQ marinade or soy sauce plus Worcestershire works if this product isn't available.

What does tamarind paste do in the marinade, and can I substitute something?

Tamarind is a souring agent — it adds a fruity, concentrated acidity that's distinctly different from vinegar or citrus. In Thai cooking it's used alongside fish sauce and lime to build the sour-savory flavor profile that distinguishes Thai food from other Southeast Asian cuisines. The 1 tablespoon here works alongside the coconut cream's fat to balance the sweetness and add a background tartness that brightens the finished chicken. If tamarind paste is unavailable, 1 tablespoon of lime juice plus ½ teaspoon of brown sugar approximates the sweet-sour balance, though the fruity depth won't be exactly replicated.

Why fry the wild rice at 425°F rather than a lower temperature?

Wild rice — unlike white or brown rice — has a dense, fibrous outer hull that requires extremely high heat to puff. At lower frying temperatures (350–375°F), the rice kernels absorb oil and become greasy without puffing. At 425°F, the moisture inside each kernel flashes to steam almost instantly, forcing the hull to expand and crisp before any oil absorption can occur. The result is a light, airy, crunchy garnish rather than a heavy, oily one. Work in very small batches — a tablespoon or two at a time — because crowding the oil drops the temperature rapidly and prevents the puffing reaction.

Can I cook this Indoors?

We rate this a 4 out of 5 for cooking indoors. Great in the kitchen, better on the grill. A Lodge cast iron skillet on a high stovetop burner sears the skewers identically to the Fusion Griddle — the griddle's advantage is its large flat surface area, which handles multiple skewers simultaneously without crowding. The wild rice frying works in any heavy saucepan on the stovetop. All sauce and marinade steps are entirely kitchen-based. The only meaningful trade-off is batch size and convenience, not flavor.

Recipe Highlights & Insights

• The Bachan's Miso Japanese Barbecue Sauce in the peanut sauce is the non-obvious ingredient that makes this sauce distinctive. Standard peanut sauce is peanut butter, coconut milk, lime, fish sauce, and sugar. The miso BBQ sauce adds fermented depth, a subtle smokiness from the soy-and-miso base, and an umami layer that makes the sauce taste more complex than its ingredient list suggests. It also introduces a slight Japanese influence that bridges the Thai satay tradition with ATBBQ's BBQ identity. Tapped Maple Syrup does the same work as palm sugar in the traditional version — it's a natural sweetener that rounds the saltiness of the fish sauce without adding a pronounced maple character.

   

• Threading the chicken strips flat onto the skewers — weaving them in a ribbon rather than folding them into chunks — is a technique detail worth emphasizing. A flat, evenly thick skewer cooks uniformly in 3–4 minutes per side on a hot griddle; a chunky or irregularly loaded skewer has thick and thin sections that cook at different rates, leaving some parts overcooked and dry while the thicker sections are still underdone. The thinner the strips (about ¼ inch), the more surface area contacts the hot griddle and the faster the cook completes. The Fusion Griddle's flat surface makes full contact across the skewer's length, which is the key advantage over a grill grate where only the bars make contact.

   

• The fried wild rice garnish is the recipe's most technically interesting component and its most catalog-distinctive element. Wild rice (a grass seed, not technically a rice) has a much more dramatic puffing response than white or brown rice due to its dense hull structure. The fried puffed wild rice that appears in high-end restaurant presentations is exactly what this recipe is doing at home — it's a professional garnish technique that requires no special equipment beyond a thermometer and a heavy pan. The Rancho Gordo California Grown Wild Rice is specified because its freshness and consistent moisture content produces a more reliable puff than commodity wild rice.

   

• At 465 calories per serving across 8 servings — including the greens, vinaigrette, and peanut sauce — this is one of the more complete nutritional packages in the Fusion Griddle catalog. The 36g of protein per serving comes from the chicken, and the 29g of fat is largely from the coconut cream, coconut milk, and peanut butter in the sauce. For a party, the make-ahead structure is the recipe's primary practical advantage: the marinade goes on the night before, the peanut sauce takes 5 minutes in a blender, and the griddle sear is 15 minutes of active cooking at showtime. Virtually everything can be staged in advance.

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• Thai Red Coconut Curry

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• Indian-Spiced Clay Pot Chicken

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