Because who doesn’t want a satay recipe every once in a while?

“Chicken on a stick! Of course I want one.” That comment came from Whitney on Sunday but I think it’s a fairly common sentiment. Chicken on a stick is the national go-to snack dish/dinner in Thailand, a country that has perfected the art of food stuck on sticks, poured into plastic bags, or wrapped in banana leaves.

Pre-made satay sauces are easy enough to come by, I guess, but not particularly cheap. This recipe won’t win bragging rights at the night market in Udon Thani, but I think it does well enough considering it’s made with mostly regular around-the-house ingredients.

1. Take some bamboo skewers and marinate them in water for about an hour. I used a coffee cup to hold them under water otherwise they just float to the surface.
2. Chop 4 cloves of garlic and 4 small dried (or fresh) red chilies (seeds removed). Drop a few tablespoons of sesame seed oil in a pan and heat; add the garlic and chili and cook until fragrant.
3. Put the chili/garlic mix in a food processor and pulse for a minute. Add about 1 cup of chunky peanut butter, and then some soy sauce and lime juice. Mix it up good.
4. Take 2 chicken breasts, and pound each until decently thin. Then use kitchen scissors to slice the breasts lengthwise so they are like 6 inches long or so and a quarter-inch wide.
5. Remove the skewers from the water and thread the chicken on them. If you wound up with extra odds and ends pieces of chicken, add those pieces to the skewer as bonus chicken. Take the satay sauce and spread it all over the chicken and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two. All told, you'll probably have 15 skewers' worth of chicken.
6. Now this is actually the hard part. Fire up the grill and place the skewers on the grates. The first thing you will notice is that any peanut butter that falls off the chicken and on to the burner will flame up considerably. The chicken has to sit on the flame long enough to cook (duh) but not so long that the skewers catch fire. A few probably will, but that just proves that you are a suburban American trying to be cool and not a Thai street vendor.

See? Babies like satay too.