♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, I think, when you travel, the best way to find out about a culture and a cuisine is, simply order the chicken, because almost every culture has a chicken dish, and it says a lot about how people think about food and cooking.

So we'll start in the Philippines with a Filipino chicken adobo, a classic dish with a great combination of flavors.

Then we'll visit London and Nigella Lawson, where she makes a chicken traybake.

It's a roasting pan with chicken parts, plus all the ingredients to make a sauce right on the tray.

And finally, we'll do chicken under a brick.

Now, that's not the Italian version.

We found one in the Republic of Georgia that has a fabulous garlic sauce.

So stay tuned right here at Milk Street as we explore chicken dishes from around the world.

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♪ ♪ - I promise you, this is going to be the most unusual Milk Street segment ever, because I'm not going to say anything.

(laughing): This is a Filipino chicken adobo.

You know slightly more about this recipe than I do.

- Just a bit.

- You got the floor.

- (laughs) Well, I grew up eating adobo pretty much every week, and it could be made in so many different ways.

This is one of those food preparations that there are as many ways to make it as there are cooks to make it.

- So, that being said, depending on whose household you go to for dinner in the Philippines, you might get adobo a different way.

I know when I was eating it growing up, my mom would use whatever protein she had on hand, whatever vegetables she had on hand, as long as it made a quick, impactful dinner, and that it did.

The only thing that adobo really requires are a couple of staple ingredients.

We're talking vinegar.

We're talking bay leaves, peppercorn, and a lot of garlic.

So we're going to do exactly that here today, switching up some of the ingredients just slightly to make a very flavorful marinade, as well as a flavorful broth.

So we'll start off with one-and-a-half cups of unseasoned rice vinegar, as well as three-quarter cups of low-sodium soy sauce.

Now, I want to stress that you want to use unseasoned rice vinegar as well as low-sodium soy sauce, because we are going to be braising chicken in this broth.

And as things braise, the liquid will reduce... - Concentrated.

- It concentrates, exactly.

To this, we'll be adding in six cloves of garlic that have been smashed, and we'll also add in three serrano chilies.

Now, this is not how my parents would make it.

They can't really handle too much spice.

Sorry, Mom and Dad.

But, that being said, I really like the welcome heat that comes with this dish.

Now, typically, we wouldn't use serranos.

You would probably want to use something more like a Thai chili or a bird's eye chili.

Really, any small chili will work.

But, in a pinch, serrano will work.

We're also going to be adding in one teaspoon of whole black peppercorns, and we're not crushing those down because as this braises, it's going to release its flavor.

And finally, we'll also throw in four bay leaves.

Now, this is a key flavor.

It lends this aroma, as well as this flavor that really permeates the meat.

- So, I do have a question.

So you know more about this than I do, but, like, in the Southern Philippines, in the islands, it's very different cooking than North or sort of the middle.

- Naturally.

- So where does this come from, in terms of the Philippines as a whole?

So this would be more akin to a Southern Filipino adobo, being that we're using a lot more spice.

- Right.

- That's usually your first indicator.

Southern Filipino food does have a little bit of a kick to it, but they marry that with a little bit of coconut, and that's what kind of quells the heat and makes it far more palatable.

So we're just going to give this a little stir before we add in the star protein of our dish here.

Now, these are six chicken thighs that are both bone-in and skin-on.

We're looking for chicken thighs that are relatively the same size, so that way, later down the road, they'll cook evenly.

So all we'll do is nestle that right into the pot.

And you want to make sure that the chicken is submerged in this marinade.

Now, keep in mind, this is a very potent marinade.

You don't want to marinate this chicken for longer than an hour.

Honestly, 30 minutes minimum is perfectly fine.

So, stick to an hour, pop the lid on it, and let it marinate for up to an hour.

Chris, our chicken thighs have been marinating for about 30 minutes now, so I say it's ready to start cooking.

All we got to do is take that entire pot and set it over medium, medium-high heat, and bring this entire mixture up to a boil.

Once we see it boil, that's when we can go ahead and lower the heat down to medium-low, because all we're looking for is a simmer.

We don't want to roughly cook any of this chicken, or else it'll get tough on you.

Now that we're at a simmer, Chris, we could go ahead and give these chicken thighs a little bit of a turn, just to make sure that all of the meat comes in contact with that very potent powerful sauce.

Chris, our chicken has been simmering for about 30 minutes at this point, and we gave it a test.

It came out at 169 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, with a little bit of carryover cooking, this will hit 170 in no time.

We're actually going to take all this chicken out of the pot, and what we're going to do is place it down on a prepared sheet tray that's been lined with foil.

Now, this is not necessarily a traditional move, I'll be honest with you.

But what I really enjoy is that it does offer a fantastic textural component, because what we're going to do is, we're going to broil all that chicken with the skin side up, and that's going to crisp up the chicken skins, kind of a chicharrón style.

So, we're patting all this chicken dry with the skin side up, and that's really going to help all of that skin get really crispy under the broiler.

We're going to set that chicken aside for now, because now I want to pay attention to the broth.

What we'll do is, we'll strain everything out.

We don't need any of those solids any further, and frankly, they're not that great to bite into.

And we'll go ahead and do away with all of these solids.

But notice now, we do have a very flavorful broth that has this very fine layer of fat on top.

Fat is flavor, but we don't want this dish to be unnecessarily greasy, so we'll go ahead and pull off as much of that fat as we can.

If you do pull some of the broth along with it, no worries.

I'm simply taking a ladle, and I'm pushing it down to the bottom of the bowl here, and I'm just gently tipping the ladle to the side to see if I could get any of that fat to fall right into the ladle bowl.

- I think that's my favorite method.

It really works very well.

It's all so you don't have to deal with a spoon sort of horizontally in a bowl?

- Exactly.

- Because it's a vertical ladle.

Yeah.

- So I think I've pulled off just enough of the fat off the top of this broth.

From here, we can go ahead and collect just a cup of it.

So now that we have this cup's worth of broth, we'll throw this right back into the pan.

And we'll also add in a whole can of coconut milk.

Now, this is coconut milk that is completely unsweetened.

It is not leche de coco, where it's going to be something a little bit more of a cocktail coconut milk.

This is purely unsweetened, whole-fat coconut milk.

If you do see some light-fat coconut milk, stay away from it-- not worth the time.

Now that this coconut milk is in the pot-- whole-fat coconut milk-- we'll bring this up to a simmer, just to melt down some of the solids.

Usually, when you open up the can of coconut milk, you'll find that all of the top is just this very thick, creamy fat, and then you have this watery milk down below.

You want to blend that up together, and it might not be completely smooth, but once you add it into a pot that's going to be hot, it'll actually melt down.

So now that this milk has started to make some noise, it's starting to simmer.

It's at this point that we don't have to cook this any further, so we could turn the heat off entirely.

Now we're adding a third a cup of cilantro, and once it's in the pot, just give it a stir, and you don't have to do anything else.

Pop a lid on it, keep it warm, while we take a look at our chicken.

We're going to pop it into the broiler.

Take a look at that, Chris.

Now, all of that skin has caramelized really beautifully, and it's nice and crispy, which I love.

So if you wouldn't mind popping some rice into those bowls, we could get ready to eat.

Now, this dish would typically be served with rice.

It's the perfect vessel to really collect all of the juices that drop off from the adobo.

We don't want to miss out on this broth.

Ooh, you hear that skin?

- Hmm.

Mmm.

Man, is that good.

- Mmm.

- This is really delicious.

- It just has so much texture to it.

And the flavor is just out of this world.

We're hitting so many different flavor points here.

We have the sweetness from the coconut milk, we have the sourness from the vinegar, the saltiness from the soy sauce, a little bit of bitterness coming from the char on the outside of that skin.

And then it's really, really deeply flavored with umami.

- Is there one thing that makes it authentic, or is there no such thing as an authentic chicken adobo?

- The only thing that really makes adobo authentic is the cooking preparation and those specific ingredients I mentioned earlier: the vinegar, the bay leaf, the black peppercorn, and the garlic.

As long as you have those four components, as well as a braising technique involved, you're making adobo.

- So, this is our authentic version of chicken in adobo.

Sweet, sour, salty, has the coconut milk, really a great combination of flavors and textures with a crispy skin, and it's easy to make.

You know, a couple of years ago, I was in London for a few days, and I actually had breakfast with Nigella Lawson.

She told me about a recipe which she knew about, and maybe it's popular in London, but I'd never heard of it, called a traybake.

So, you take a tray like this, you roast chicken parts on it, and at the same time, in a hot oven, you also roast the makings of a sauce.

So the sauce and the chicken get cooked at the same time, and it's a really easy, quick way to make a supper.

So we have two poblanos, chopped up, we have one medium onion, a pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, and if you like a little extra spice, one habanero.

Also, a quarter-cup of olive oil.

Now, we're going to add one other thing to this.

We have a tablespoon of chili powder with two teaspoons of kosher salt.

We'll just take a tablespoon of this and add that in.

And now we'll mix that up.

So this will be the basis for our sauce.

So, we'll just put that aside for a second.

Now we have the remaining chili powder and salt.

We're going to add a few ingredients to this to create a rub.

A tablespoon of light brown sugar, a tablespoon of dried oregano, a tablespoon of kosher salt, and two teaspoons of black pepper.

And I will just smash that up.

I'm going to use my hands on the sugar, just to get it a little looser.

This will be the rub for the chicken.

We're using whole leg parts.

And now I have the spice mixture, we'll do both sides.

You know, using a baking sheet rather than a big roasting pan with high sides is really a great technique.

It allows you to get the heat of the oven all around the food, and it's quicker roasting or baking.

And it's also more even.

In the center, we're going to put the most delicate item, which are ten garlic cloves, and then we'll grab the sauce ingredients and put them on the outside.

We're going to put this in the oven at 450 for 30 to 40 minutes.

And the dark meat-- this is leg parts-- should be 175 to 180.

But first, I'm going to go wash my hands.

Chicken is ready.

It's out of the oven, and it does look absolutely fabulous.

So I'm going to take the chicken off and put it on our serving platter.

That.

Now, we're going to take the onion, and also the habanero, and we're going to chop those before we make our sauce, because they're not going to break down easily.

And... there's the other part, okay.

Meanwhile, let me take the rest of the ingredients for the sauce and put that into a bowl, including all the liquid from the chicken.

So the poblanos, the cherry tomatoes, the garlic, all those spices.

Okay, so let's give this a good chop.

Okay, good.

Now we're going to turn this into a sauce, or a salsa.

It's not really smooth, but it has great flavor.

So we have a quarter-cup of chopped cilantro, we'll take about half of it, put that in.

And a little bit of vinegar.

A tablespoon of white vinegar, just to brighten things up a little.

So, I should taste it first.

Looks great, but... Mmm.

(laughing): That's really good.

You know, you can do a lot of quick pan sauces for chicken, but when you roast the vegetables in a very hot oven for half an hour, along with the spices and the juices from the chicken, that's really what gives us the foundation.

It really tastes great, and it's easier than making a separate sauce.

And the last two tablespoons of cilantro.

So any Tuesday night or any night of the week, you could take Nigella Lawson's recipe, this notion of traybake, where you make a sauce at the same time you roast a chicken.

It's incredibly easy to do, and you get one of the best sauces ever.

You know, there's nothing new about chicken under a brick, an old Italian recipe, but we were in the Republic of Georgia, in the Caucasus-- that's Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Republic of Georgia-- and they actually do the same thing there.

Or they do it on top of the stove.

They actually foil-wrapped a brick to use, and then they made a garlic sauce with what was left in the pan.

So I guess this recipe has got legs, as it were.

- (chuckling): Good, good one.

- Good, I-- like that?

- I like that, yeah.

- I'm really on top of it today.

- So to do this chicken, we're going to start on the stovetop, to get the browning on the skin, and then actually finish it in the oven.

We found that got us some crispy skin, but also really nice and moist chicken.

So we're going to spatchcock the chicken.

That just means to butterfly it, and it's a really simple technique, and it's actually a really useful technique to have in your repertoire.

Really simple if you have a pair of nice, sharp kitchen shears.

So all you need to do is go along the backbone here, and just cut through... You're essentially cutting through the ribs here.

So flip the chicken over, where the breast lives.

Kind of lives like that.

So you want to flatten that out.

All you need to do is take the heel of your hand and press down hard.

(cracking) You just want to hear the backbone kind of crack there, and that'll make it nice and flat.

So all of this skin will get in contact with the skillet and get nice and brown.

I'm just going to tuck our wings.

Now, in Italy, they usually make a marinade and let this go 24 hours.

In Georgia, they do just simply salt and pepper.

We're kind of combining the two here and making a little bit of a dry spice rub.

So we're going to use one-and-a-half teaspoons of ground coriander, a half a teaspoon of granulated garlic.

Granulated garlic is basically garlic powder, but just a larger grain, almost like the texture of cornmeal.

- We should just say that I was against this ingredient for many years, but when it comes in contact with high heat, like in this recipe, it doesn't burn, so that's a good reason to... - That's right.

So it's a bit, yeah, because it's large.

A tablespoon of salt.

And a half-teaspoon of black pepper.

Mix that up.

And then we're just going to get this all over the exterior of the chicken.

You want to really rub this in.

We really want that spice rub to penetrate the skin, so this needs to sit for about 30 to 45 minutes.

The other thing that we want to see happen here is that this skin is going to get dried out.

Dry skin equals crispy skin, and that's what we're going for here.

So I'm going to wash my hands, we'll come back in about a half-hour, 45 minutes, and start cooking the chicken.

- Great.

- So the chicken has been resting.

All that flavor from that spice rub has penetrated the skin.

Because there's salt in that rub, it can draw moisture out of the chicken.

We want to make sure this is nice and dry before it hits that hot skillet, or the skin will not get as crispy.

All right, so we have a 12-inch, oven-safe skillet.

The skillet should be oven-safe, because we're going to transfer it into the oven.

(laughing) - Who said you weren't quick?

- So we're going to heat a tablespoon of grapeseed oil, and we're going to heat this over medium-high, just until it's smoking.

So here's where the brick comes in.

Uh, we're not going to walk around town looking for bricks.

Instead, we're going to use a nice, heavy skillet.

We're going to use a cast-iron skillet.

If you don't have one, you could use a heavy Dutch oven instead.

So I'm going to put the chicken into the pan, smoking.

Skin side down.

(sizzling) - Mmm.

- We're going to put a little piece of tinfoil here, on its back.

That's just going to keep it from sticking to the skillet.

And then... weight that down.

And that's going to force that skin to really get nice and crispy.

It's going to press it into the skillet.

You want to make sure that your chicken is no larger than four pounds.

Otherwise, it won't fit into the skillet.

You want to turn this down to medium heat at this point, so we get nice, even browning-- nothing gets too dark.

(sizzling) So I'm going to check this.

It's been about five minutes.

You want to check it every five minutes or so.

It should take a total of 15 minutes to get it nice and brown.

And so I just want to check to see how it's browning.

Ooh, it looks really good.

So, I'm going to put the skillet back on.

So we'll let this go another about ten minutes or so, once it's really nice and golden-brown.

- But it depends on your stovetop and your skillet.

It could go in just a few minutes.

- Really, really fast.

- Very quickly.

- If you happen to have something high-powered.

(sizzling) All right, Chris, I think it's nicely browned.

Take a peek.

(sizzling) - Mmm.

- Oh, yeah.

So now we need to transfer it out of the pan.

Which is always the fun part, right?

(sizzling) And I'm actually going to get rid of the fat that's in the pan.

If we left that in, it would burn when we put it in the oven.

So I'm just going to flip it over, transfer it back into the skillet, but this time, we're going to put it in breast side up.

And then I'm going to put this in a 450-degree oven, and you want to put that on the lowest rack.

And that'll take about 30 minutes to cook.

You want to get 160 in the thickest part of the breast on an instant-read thermometer.

Look at that chicken.

- Nicely done.

Or I would say perfectly done.

- Thank you.

So, as a reminder, this has been in the oven, so this skillet is very hot.

One thing I do at home is... - I do that, too.

- ...sort of slide a mitt on, just to remind myself that the skillet handle is hot.

So, I'm going to transfer our chicken onto a carving board.

Thank you.

And that's going to just rest while we make a really flavorful sauce.

And we're going to use all of this really delicious flavor that's in our pan to make the sauce.

So, over medium-high heat, I'm going to add two tablespoons of salted butter and eight cloves of garlic that we've just chopped up.

(sizzling) So you can start to smell that garlic, it's starting to brown.

So to this pan, we're going to add two cups of chicken broth.

(pan simmering) And if there's anything stuck on here, you definitely want to scrape that off at this point, so we get all that flavor in the pan.

We're going to let this simmer for about 15 minutes or so.

While that's simmering, we're going to rest our chicken for a little while, and then you're going to carve it.

- Are you asking me if I...?

- No, I'm telling you.

- Oh, you're telling me.

- So the sauce is reduced to about three-quarters of a cup.

Just going to go through and kind of smush this garlic into the sauce.

(sizzling) Okay.

So I'm going to turn it off, take it off the heat, and add the final ingredients.

And so I have two tablespoons of lemon juice, a quarter-cup of cilantro, and a quarter-teaspoon of cayenne.

All right, I'm going to transfer this into this bowl here.

You did a wonderful job carving the chicken.

- I did.

Mmm.

Mmm.

That chicken is perfectly cooked, too.

- It is.

- Tender.

You know, I'm, I'm a little afraid of garlic.

It's one of my great fears in life, is an overpowering amount of garlic.

I've had a very sheltered life.

- (laughs) - This has garlic flavor, but you're right.

It's, it's not bitter.

It's not tough, yeah-- subtle.

So the recipe for chicken under a brick is well-known in Italy, but it turns out, when our editor was in the Republic of Georgia, he found a similar recipe.

We didn't use a brick, of course.

We used a cast-iron skillet to weigh it down, and we finished the chicken in the oven, took it out, and finished with those juices with the nice sauce with lots of garlic and also a little bit of cilantro.

Crispy chicken under a brick.

You can make it Tuesday night.

You can make it Saturday night.

Great crispy skin and a great sauce.

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- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪