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Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 50, The Vinegar Line, the Sizzling Plate and the Whole Roast Pig

Chicken Inasal

Ilonggo Iloilo and Panay

Chicken inasal, charcoal grilled chicken basted in annatto oil, marinated in coconut vinegar and lemongrass: a charcoal grilled chicken leg and thigh with a deep orange red lacquered skin and light charring at the edges, resting on a bed of pale orange annatto rice.

Illustration

Time
4 hours

Ilonggo cooking carries a documented sweet hand, a legacy of the nineteenth-century Negros sugar wealth that built Iloilo's haciendero class, and inasal's brown-sugar marinade against sinamak's sharp, spiced vinegar is that sweetness and that sourness worked side by side rather than one cancelling the other.

As tradition built it

Serves 4. At least 4 hours' marination, ideally overnight, then grilling.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Marinate the chicken thigh and leg pieces in coconut vinegar, calamansi juice, chopped lemongrass, grated ginger, grated garlic, brown sugar and a little soy sauce, a representative ratio being a quarter cup each of vinegar and soy, a quarter cup brown sugar, two tablespoons each of lemongrass, ginger and calamansi juice, for at least four hours, ideally overnight.
  2. Grill over charcoal, basting repeatedly with separately prepared annatto oil, until the skin is deeply coloured and lightly charred.
  3. Serve with rice cooked in the leftover annatto oil and sinamak, an Ilonggo spiced vinegar of vinegar, garlic, ginger or galangal and chilli, on the side.

What a modern chef changes

Doneness controlled sous vide, char and colour left to live fire alone

Rung 4

Method

  1. Cook the marinated chicken sous vide at 64°C for 90 minutes for precisely even doneness through to the bone, then dry it thoroughly.
  2. Finish over live charcoal on the Big Green Egg, basted repeatedly with a longer, more deeply infused annatto oil, so the final char and smoke, per Rung 4, do the real work of colour and flavour rather than papering over an unevenly cooked interior.
  3. Build the sinamak with a wider aromatic base than the everyday version, fresh galangal alongside ginger, a mix of bird's eye and longer chillies, and a longer maceration, served in a small dish for dipping rather than poured over.
  4. Cook the annatto rice in oil strained twice for total clarity, so the grains carry colour without any bitter sediment.
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