hapa bento

A newly discovered ingredient… smoked salt!  Isn’t it gorgeous?   It smells exactly like you imagine it would…like burning kiawe (mesquite), the king of barbecue wood and I think this  black rock-salt will revolutionize my kitchen!

While growning up in Hawaii , we ate  more than our fair share of fund-raiser barbecued bird… “Huli-huli” chicken.   Huli means “turn” in Hawaiian and that’s how it got it’s name.  Rows of  chicken halves or quarters are sandwiched between two grills over the hot coals—when one side is done the whole grill is flipped over.   The cooks  would holler “Huli” and the men would lift the heavy grill and flip the all chickens…sometimes 10-15 to a single grill.  For large  events there could be many rows of  grills  all cooking at the same time.    A very impressive sight as the smoke carried an undeniable fragrance… luring  hungry islanders and pointing the way to the feast!

Ah the memories of  standing  in a long line and not caring about the hot sun beating down on us.  It. Was. All. About. The. Chicken.   It’s that good.   Carnival season in Hawaii is “Huli-huli” chicken time!  

I’ve read that the original recipe is a secret.  If you Google ”huli ”huli” you’ll find more than a few recipes and I’m not sure which one is closest to the “read deal”.   While living there I felt no need to make my own so  I ‘m probably close to clueless on the exact ingredients.   But for sure — the base ingredient is shoyu!   No doubt about it.  So here’s my interpretation of “Huli-huli” Chicken (for bento) with the smoked salt as a stand-in for the huli grill.

Mock “Huli-Huli” Chicken

Ingredients:

2-3  (free range)chicken thighs cut into bite sized pieces

1/4  -1/2 cup of shoyu

1 teaspoon crushed ginger

2 cloves of crushed garlic

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

splash  wine or sake  :)

1 teaspoon of smoked salt ( no smoked salt needed if you really are cooking out on the grill)

Instructions:

This recipe is similar to  many of my “simmer- then- roast”  concoctions.   Just mix, marinate for at least an hour (best if overnight) ,simmer on med heat, then pop into a hot roaster at 425 degrees to finish it off. 

But it’s okay to skip the roasting phase.  The chicken seemed to do just fine in the pan.  Just turn  up the heat and stir constantly until it browns.   Talk about easy, this chicken was was done in no time and without all the “huli-huli” smoke!

As a footnote… I ‘ve been on a chicken “thing” lately so for you veggie eaters, thanks for sticking around.   I do have some scrumptious vegetarian recipes in queue and I promise to add them to the blog soon!