This is our traditional family recipe for satay, handed down via my wife’s mum. It’s perfect for a sunny BBQ, and knocks the socks off any of the oddities they call satay in the supermarkets.
Satay is the name of the marinated, barbequed skewers of meat, rather than the peanut sauce known as satay in the UK. A sauce like that is traditionally served with satay in Malaysia, but it’s a total sideshow compared to the sticky sweet marinated meat if you follow a traditional recipe like this.
Choosing the meat
This recipe is for about kilo of meat in total, which could be chicken or beef, or a combination of the two. This should be enough to feed 3-4 people with sides.
Beef: go for a steak cut such as sirloin or rib-eye. These are both tender enough to eat after quick cooking, and also have enough fat to add flavour and keep moist during cooking. The strip of fat on a sirloin steak is particularly useful: stick pieces between chunks of meat on the skewer and it goes crispy on the outside, melt-in-the-mouth on the inside.
Chicken: go for boned thighs, rather than breasts, as the extra fat content stops them drying out on the BBQ. Skinless is easier, unless you prefer skin-on.
Ingredients
Feeds about 4 people, depending on what you’re having with it.
Meat
1kg chicken and/or beef
Marinade
About 3 inches ginger
About 2 inches galangal, or 1tbsp of galangal paste, or if you can’t get this, use more ginger in its place
3-4 stalks lemongrass
5 cloves garlic
6 small shallots or 2 larger echalion-style shallots (less peeling involved with these!)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp ground turmeric
4 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cumin powder (optional)
1/4 tsp coriander powder (optional)
1 tbsp kicap manis (optional)
Whole spices
2 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
For the BBQ
A stack of wooden barbeque skewers
A little bowl of vegetable oil
Another stalk of lemongrass
Method
Marinating
Blitz the marinade paste ingredients to a fine paste, taste and tweak with salt and sugar until you are happy with the balance. You want this to be pretty sweet. Crush the whole spices and mix them in. Cut the meat into 1-2 inch cubes, mix the different types of meat up seperately with the marinade. Leave to marinate for at least two hours – overnight much better. If there are strips of fat from the meat, cut these into 1-2 inch pieces and mix them in too.
Preparing the satay sticks
A couple of hours before you spark up the barbie, soak the skewers in cold water so they won’t burn. Or, like us, you can keep them in the freezer so they only need 15-odd minutes of soaking in tepid water to defrost them. Then thread 3-4 pieces of meat on each skewer, sandwiching little cuts of marinated fat between them if you have any.
BBQing technique
Pop the skewers on the barbie in bunches of 4 or 5. Bash the end of the last piece lemongrass and use this to dab a little oil on each skewer. Dab again when you turn them. They should be beautifully sweet and caramelised on the outside, but juicy and just right on the inside, when cooked.
Nettleton Family Cookbook 