Tamarind Coconut Chicken Kabobs

We like to watch the show Chopped where chefs open a basket full of mystery ingredients and cook a dish from the items. Well, during our last trip to Tan A market, Andrew picked up a container of Concentrated Cooking Tamarind.

I asked him what it was for and he said it looked interesting.

I decided  to create a dish around this “mystery” ingredient.   I like that this product only  had “water and tamarind” on it’s ingredient list.   It’s very tart and if you use this for cooking, you’d definitely need to add spices to it.  For Filipinos, it’s a great soup base for “Sinigang” if you want to avoid the flavor tamarind packets that are high in sodium.

Tamarind Coconut Chicken Kabobs

2 lbs chicken breast cut into 1×1 inch cubes
1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cups cooking tamarind concentrate
1 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
2-4 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon sriracha
2 tablespoon oil
1-2 teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoon pepper
1 tsp fish sauce (optional)
Onions (optional)

Essential items:
Skewers (soak in water 30 minutes prior to broiling)
Greased baking pan

Directions:
1. Cut chicken breast pieces in half then cut crosswise for thinner pieces of meat to skewer.
2. Marinade chicken for 3-4 hours
3. Carefully skewer chicken pieces
4. Broil on Low for 5 minutes then High for 2-4 Minutes
5. Make sure the chicken is cooked through, you can do this by carefully taking out a skewer with a thicker piece of chicken and cutting it on a plate to check if it’s done.
6. Optional: “cook” the leftover marinade on medium heat, stir often until it thickens, use as a dipping sauce

Tips:

– The skewers need to be soaked if you want to avoid smoke and lighted “matchsticks” in your oven (guilty)
– The chicken will shrink as it cooks, try not to cut it too small.
– You can add vegetables to broil, I broiled onions for the arugula salad that we were having with our chicken kabobs.
– Make your own marinade, experiment, i would love to hear about it.
– Enjoy!