Chef Jet Tila can sniff out a second-rate Thai restaurant from a mile away, but apparently, he has other tricks up his sleeve — and Bobby Flay is a fan. Flay once shared on Facebook that he loves using Tila’s Thai barbecue chicken marinade when cooking his own dishes.
It’s a bit more complex than your average two-ingredient chicken marinade, but it’s simple enough. Tila’s marinade requires red curry paste, yellow curry powder, coconut milk, soy sauce, garlic, sugar, and pepper. While Flay follows the recipe to a T, when it comes to cooking, he makes a change that’s sure to fire up your taste buds. While Tila’s original recipe calls for roasting the chicken in the oven, Flay does what he does best. He throws it on the grill for a charred crispy skin. It’s a slow grill, so he uses medium heat to get the job done. If you like your food to have a bit of added texture, you’ll love Flay’s method too.
The secret to Jet Tila’s sauce
The secret to this Bobby Flay-endorsed marinade is in the curry. Tila told the Food Network that he modified a traditional recipe to cook chicken in large batches. “I didn’t need to individually source galanga [a member of the ginger family], lemongrass, chili, turmeric and all the other ingredients to make Thai BBQ chicken the old way,” he explained, “because all those ingredients were in curry paste and curry powder.”
Fans of Thai cuisine know just how essential these ingredients are to any dish. Red curry paste is a versatile ingredient made with coriander, chilies, lemongrass, galanga, and shrimp paste (usually), among other things. It can be used in anything from meat marinades to Thai-inspired coconut and pumpkin soup. Yellow curry powder also contains a wealth of ingredients that vary from recipe to recipe; many of them, including coriander and cumin, are also in red curry paste. What makes it stand out is the turmeric, which gives it that vibrant yellow color. Combine the two, and you’ve got one flavorful marinade base.
