Recreate your favourite restaurant recipe at home. This Portuguese style Peri Peri chicken chicken taste pretty awesome and is extremely easy.

Marinated in peri peri marinade made from scratch, this chicken recipe is perfect for grilling or baking.

What is Peri Peri Chicken ?

Commonly known as Peri Peri Chicken or Piri Piri Chicken and has been famously known as Nandos Chicken. The name comes from Piri Piri peppers which are Birds eye chillies, commonly grown in Africa and Portugal.

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The recipe for Peri Peri chicken is fairly straight forward but the flavours are amazing. And it might become your favourite chicken recipe.

What type of chicken meat to use for Peri Chicken ?

You can use chicken drumsticks, chicken Maryland or whole chicken and even wings. If you are using whole chicken, its better to Butterfly it ( remove the backbone and make it flat), this helps even cooking and char without turning it over during the cooking.

Traditionally its made with skin on, but if you don’t prefer it can be removed. I did the same.

How to Make Peri Peri Sauce

Peri Peri Sauce is the main element of this recipe. Freshly made sauce is used to marinate chicken.

If you intend to store the sauce or use it as a dipping sauce simply cook the sauce in a pan, add little vinegar as it acts as a preservative. Once water dries up and no moisture is left in it, sauce can be poured into a jar. Add tablespoon of oil, it helps to preserve it too. It should stay good in fridge for couple of weeks.

The ingridients for peri peri sauce are:

Chillies – Peri Peri chillies aren’t easily available. The closest version that can be used is cayenne pepper or Thai red chilli. I used cayenne pepper and they had very appropriate level of spice in them. As a rule of thumb the smaller the chilli the hotter/ spicier it is.

Red Capsicum is used to give colour and also balances the spice from cayenne pepper.

Onion helps to give texture to the sauce and also the enzymes in it help to tenderise the meat.

Garlic gives flavour and extra kick to the sauce.

Spices used are Paprika Powder, Cumin Seeds, Oregano and salt.

Olive Oil helps marinade to coat the chicken well.

Coriander adds wonderful flavour and aroma to the sauce.

Lemon Juice and Brown Sugar helps balance out the chilli flavour.

Vinegar ( Use only if you are preserving sauce for longer)

Simply blitz all the ingredients with hand stick mixer or in a blender.

Marinate the chicken for at least few hours or for the best results marinate for 24 hrs.

How to Cook Peri Peri Chicken

The chicken can be grilled in the pan or it can be barbecued on the grill or charcoal. You can also bake it in the oven. Cook while turning it once, the timings may vary according to the method you choose and the cut of meat.

To check if its done, slightly cut the thickest part of the chicken, the juices should run clear and meat should no longer be pink inside.

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What to Serve with Peri Peri Chicken ?

Add some sides to this flavorsome chicken and make it a feast. Serve fries, grilled corn cobs and also any kind of fresh salad goes well too. Add Pita bread on side.

I prepared Peri Peri rice to go along with this chicken.