Salmon and Chicken Satays - Breaking Down and Marinating

Transcripts

Bryan Davis: Hi, my name is Bryan Davis with Chef Bryan's Kitchen. In this clip which we are going top be doing chicken and salmon satays, I am going to show you hot to cut the chicken and make the marinade so that we will be all ready to let them sit so that we can prepare them for the grill. So let's go ahead and get started with the chicken. What we are going to do, we have nice, skinless, boneless chicken breast and what we are going to do is we are going to cut our chicken in little, almost, bite-size pieces. Now then when I do these, I like to keep from dirtying up a lot of things in the kitchen. So what I am going to do is I am going to put my marinade together so that when I cut the chicken, I can put it straight into the marinade. So what we are going to do first to start our marinade is we are going to take our soy sauce, I am going to put about two tablespoons of soy sauce, put about two tablespoons of lemon juice and about one tablespoon of rice wine vinegar. We have got olive oil here and what we are going to do is we are going to emulsify the olive oil in, we are going to continue to whisk our base while we slowly drizzle the olive oil in. What we are trying to do is just get this all combined so that the oil doesn't separate out. We have got our nice base, so now what we are going to do is we are going to do add a little bit of garlic. Now then what we are going to do with the garlic is we are going to make a paste out of it. So the way we are going to do this, I am going to take the tip off and then basically, we are just going to slice our garlic down until we get it finely chopped. I am just going to take it down until we get a nice, fine chop. Then what we are going to do is I am going to add just a touch of salt to it and then we are going to start using the side of our knife, I am going to start mashing the garlic against the cutting board to make a paste. What this does is it completely breaks the garlic down to where we get the flavor so that we don't have the large, raw, bite of garlic. It also helps for when you are making a salad dressing or any type of marinade, it helps to bring the flavor out a little bit quicker. So now we have got our garlic paste that we are just going to throw in there, stir that around and that's about what we want for our marinade. Now that since we are doing both chicken and salmon satay, what I am going to do is I am going to divide this marinade into two, rather than make two batches of marinade, just make one batch and divide it. So now we can go ahead and continue to prep our chicken. So what we are going to do like I said, we just want these bite-size, so we are going to take our knife and we are just going to cut on an angle on the chicken. They don't really have to be exact, the main thing, you want to try and keep them all about the same size and you want to keep them all about the same width. You want these to be easy to eat and not something that people are going to have to take off the stick and use a knife and fork with. So we are going to take these and we are just going to put them right down in our marinade and let these sit. You want them to sit for minimum of about 30 minutes but they can sit for up to a couple of hours. So we are just going to toss this around, let these sit for a couple of minutes and what I am going to do now is I am going to take a little bit of cilantro, I am just going to break this with my fingers and put it right into the marinade and just let all of these flavors melt together so that they will flavor the chicken nicely. Now this is a chicken that we are going to serve with a sauce, but you really don't need to serve this with a sauce, this is going to have a great flavor just on its own. So there is the chicken, so now what we are going to do is we are going to go straight to the salmon. Now then for the salmon we want the same process. What we are going to do is we have got a nice fillet of salmon here and what we are going to do is we are going to take belly flap off of the salmon. I am still going to use it, but it is going to cook a little bit differently than the rest of the salmon. So I want to cook the belly flap a little bit separately. So what we are going to do with our salmon is we are going to take it and we are going to basically, cut into fillets about however long you want the satays to be, that's how big you are going to cut your fillet. So I have got a piece of salmon, you know we have a nice fillet here and what we are going to do is we are just going to cut it in the same bite-size pieces.

The salmon is going to be a little bit more uniform than the chicken just because of the nature of the product that you are starting off with, but again, you want about the same size. Nice bite-size piece that people will be able to eat very easily. So just going to so a few more of these. So we have put them in the marinade and now what we are going to do is we are going to take a little bit more of our cilantro and we are just going to break it up and put it in there and again, let these flavors melt. So we have our marinade together, we have our cilantro in there so now what we are going to do is we are going to toss these together and we are going to let these sit for again, a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of about two hours. Alright, so now we have our salmon and our chicken in the marinade, so what we are going to do now is we are going to let these sit for about 30 minutes and in the next clip, we are going to show you how to skewer them and grill them.