ฮันนี่ไก่ไทยถั่วลิสง

orrrr... Thai Honey Peanut Chicken.  For those of us who aren't fluent in Thai.

Last night's yummy supper!
Eaten January 24th, 2011

That is what we had for supper last night - Thai Honey Peanut Chicken.

I had found the recipe a while ago online, and I pretty much love anything with "Thai", "Honey", "Peanut", or "Chicken" in the title.  So when they all came together in a title, I figured I had struck gold!

There was only one problem.

The recipe calls for the chicken to be marinated for two to three hours before cooking.  And, well, you see, I work 8:30-4:30 everyday, and my dear husband works (usually) 9:30-6:00 everyday - and he gets the car.  So, I don't get home until about 6:30 from work everyday, and by then I don't have time to marinate chicken for two to three hours.  If I tried, I am pretty sure my husband would resort to eating his own arm or something.

So, I took the chicken out to start thawing before I went to bed on Sunday night, and made the marinade.   Yesterday morning before leaving for work, I cut the chicken up, re-mixed the marinade and threw the chicken in with it.  So instead of marinating for 2-3 hours, the chicken marinated for about 11.  This fact is somewhat important, because I think it led to some of my problems a little later on in the recipe.

The good thing about marinating it in the morning was that it made a really quick supper when we got home.  I just threw the chicken (and the marinade) into the skillet and cooked it up.  The only issue is that my chicken didn't come out looking perfectly like the chicken in the recipe picture.  Mine looked much darker, almost burnt.

But - don't worry - it wasn't burnt.  The marinade had just gotten lumpy around the chicken and made the chicken look a lot darker.  It also meant that I didn't have all that good sauce to put on my veggies and rice.  Which was kind of lame.

I think there are most likely two reasons for this faut pas.  The first is that I let it marinade longer than I was supposed to.  Luckily, it didn't break down the meat, but it might have done funky things to the sauce.  My second hypothesis is that when I turn my stove on to a setting higher than the lowest - it gets really hot.  And I imagine the pan was too hot and that did funky things to the sauce too.

I also didn't have sesame seeds or chopped cilantro.  So my chicken looks a lot less appetizing than in the recipe picture.

But, let me tell you - it was some good!  I don't like Curry Powder all that much - so I only used the mild stuff - and I could barely taste it!  I think my poor husband was slightly upset that I hadn't used the hot stuff, but I don't have that kind of balls.  So I didn't.

Even though it looks awful and didn't have yummy sauce to go with it, this is definitely a keeper.  I am pretty sure Dave told me four times while he was eating it that he really liked it and wanted to have it again.

Hopefully next time I can try to get it right.

Edit: For those of you like my sister who didn't know the sweet recipe link I put up top (look for the word 'recipe' in blue).  You can also find it here.