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Teriyaki Barbecued Chicken

In continuing with my "cooking for hackers" theme, I'm going to explain how I (yes, me of all people) managed to make some teriyaki barbecued chicken that I didn't fuck up and actually tasted pretty good. And I've made it probably almost ten times now. If I can't fuck it up, you know it's easy.

Buy yourself some chicken parts. Not a whole chicken, because that would involve knowing how to cut it up, and it'd be cheaper just to buy the pieces. A pack of about 8 wings costs me about five bucks. Take it home and stick it in the freezer until the morning of the night you want to eat it (yes it'll need to thaw so it's not an instant snack).

You will need

Take your chicken out of the freezer and start it thawing. As soon as it's thawed enough to break it apart, put it in a bowl and smother it in teriyaki marinade. It's best to do this at about 10am and leave it there the whole day.

About half an hour from when you want to eat, take the chicken out of the bowl and drop it in a pot of boiling water. Pour the teriyaki sauce in there too for good measure. Set a timer or an alarm for about 25 minutes so you don't fux it up, and you might want to turn the heat down to about 3/4 just in case.

After the 25 minutes is up, you basically have boiled chicken. But boiled chicken doesn't taste very good, so we're going to give it the illusion that you barbecued it. So take the chicken out of the water and take it out to your barbecue, along with whatever teriyaki sauce is still in the bottle.

Light the barbecue without setting fire to yourself or your house, and wait until it's warmed up. A gas grill won't take too long, but a charcoal grill might take a little while. Then put the chicken on the grill, and pour some teriyaki sauce on it. Leave it about 5 minutes, then flip it over and repeat.

Depending on the heat of your barbecue, you might wanna not wait 5 minutes. The trick is to keep it moving so it doesn't burn, but you want those slightly darker patches that make it look like it was barbecued. I've found the best way to do this is to turn it often, and keep pouring teriyaki sauce on it before you turn it. The teriyaki sauce burns on the surface of the chicken and gives it a very barbecue like effect.

When you're happy that your chicken looks barbecued, take it inside and enjoy it.

Why boil it?

I've found that boiling the chicken makes it almost impossible to fuck up. If you boil it for 25 minutes, it's almost guaranteed to be cooked (but you should still tear a piece open to make sure it's not pink). If you just try to barbecue raw chicken, it's notoriously easy to burn the fuck out of it and have it still clucking on the inside.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of cooking for hackers.

Addednum

Magickal1 says (and he's a chef - he should know what he's talking about) you can get away with boiling it for about 6 minutes, and turning it on the grill every three minutes, for about four turns ("quarter turn, quarter turn, flip and repeat"). I'll give it a shot next time and figure out if I can do it or not.