Hello everyone! Zak here from Cape Town South Africa. A little while ago it was Heritage Day in South Africa and though I shared that Holiday with everyone, I said that I would follow up with a post about the food-making.

The key to doing chicken on the coals is the preparation! Let's get right to it!

Braai Chicken Preparation

Ingredients & Equipment

Chicken as is needed to feed everyone
BBQ or Steakhouse sauce
Oven/fire-proof baking dish
Two-pronged fork or long meat skewer

Right. So the first thing to do is to get the chicken you need for your family. Usually 2-3 Pieces per adult and 2 pieces per teenager is the way we go. At some point when the kids were little one piece might have been fine.

It also really matters WHAT pieces of chicken. For this recipe, it is best to use thighs, drumsticks and wings. Breast and Back pieces aren't generally done on the braai, but if they are we would do something else with them.

Chicken and Sauce.

Right, so you want to pack your chicken in tightly into your oven dish.

Put the Chicken in the Pyrex.

Then you want to poke the chicken full of holes. This allows the marinade sauce to penetrate more deeply into the chicken meat. It also helps get the cooking even, through to the bone.

If you don't have a fork like this, you need something long and thin. A steak knife is not the way to go. Longer and skinnier, like a skewer will do.

Stab the Chicken

There we go. You will need to do the poking on a whole layer before packing other pieces on top of the first and then repeat the process.

Chicken full of holes

Now drench all the chicken liberally with the marinade. There will be some moisture coming from the chicken and that will mix with the marinade. This is all good.

Smother the chicken in marinade.

Now, while I go outside and get the fire going to make coals, this is where the chicken will rest. If I had the day before to prepare (and I rarely do), then the marinading could happen overnight in the fridge.

But we need to braai in a few hours and the worst thing that you can have at a braai is RAW chicken.

So this goes to marinade in the oven at a low heat. 100C is usually fine and I cover it because I want nothing seared on the outside. I just want the heat to seep into the meat and draw the marinade in and give it some heat that goes through to the bone.

And your preparation is done! Now go have fun!

Oven Prep

Fire Preparation

Usually, I already have the fire started. This is the social part of the evening. Fire. Music. Children playing. Talking. Drinking. Family time.

Get the fire going.

So my lovely and I will talk and we will chat to the kids and they will run around and play.

My Braai lovely!

Eventually, the coals are ready. Just prior to the meat hitting the grid, the grid is lowered to the coals while it is still too hot to make food. This is so the heat can cook off and burn off anything that is dirty.

I use a steel brush to clean the grid at this point. If you really struggle to get it clean, a bit of lemon or even an onion can help!

Coals are ready

And then it is time for the chicken to go on the grille. You need to turn the chickn fast if the coals are still hot. You don't want any side to burn. This is usually why this part is done with people nearby, having a chat.

Now, very important you will see in this picture, is my over-proof dish ON the grid. This is deliberate.

The marinade touched raw chicken. So this marinade goes on the fire till it bubbles a bit and cooks the sauce till its safe.