Indonesian-Inspired Roast Chicken Combines A World Of Flavor In One Simple Marinade

If you're rolling your eyes at yet another standard roast chicken dinner, you can transform it with the help of an Indonesian-inspired marinade. While classic French or British roast chicken and potatoes recipes focus more on execution, Southeast Asian cuisine's complexity is derived from spicy, hot, and savory spice blends. Indonesian cuisine takes full advantage of its bounty of spices, herbs, and chilis to create vibrant sauces, condiments, and marinades.

A case in point is Tasting Table's Indonesian-inspired roast chicken developed by Ting Dalton, which blends common Indonesian flavors in an easy marinade to elevate an otherwise standard roast chicken dinner. The marinade has multiple common Indonesian ingredients, including coconut milk, palm sugar, limes, lemongrass, aromatics, fresh chilis, and savory spices like cumin and turmeric. Nearly every taste on the spectrum is represented in one simple marinade; the chilies and garlic provide spice and heat, the coconut milk and palm sugar are a sweet and creamy balance, and the spices and fish sauce are the savory and umami-rich elements, while lemongrass and lime juice round everything out with a bright tanginess.

While this marinade sounds anything but simple, its simplicity lies in its preparation. All that's needed is to throw all of the ingredients into a blender to form a thick paste-like marinade to coat the chicken. As with most meat marinades, you'll want to let the chicken absorb the marinade for at least an hour in the fridge, but you can also leave it to marinate overnight.

Tasting Table is deliberate in labeling the roast chicken dish "Indonesian-inspired," perhaps because roast chicken and potatoes isn't a traditional Indonesian preparation. Indonesian cuisine, similar to many Southeastern Asian cuisines, doesn't make use of ovens. Instead, most of their iconic dishes revolve around a grill or stove-top wok. However, the flavors and ingredients of the marinade draw influences from a variety of Indonesian recipes, from curries to condiments.

Indonesia encompasses thousands of islands, and regional cuisine is diverse, with many similarities to other southeast, south, and east Asian cuisines. Like Thailand and India, Indonesia has plenty of stewed curry dishes called gulai and stewed meats like rendang that use a foundation of coconut milk, lemongrass, and chilis. Rendang variations in Indonesia are less soupy and more saucy, so this roast chicken could also be a simpler spin on chicken rendang, as the saucy marinade infuses the chicken but also creates a coating for the veggies you roast along with it. Sambal, (not to be confused with sriracha), mimics the sweet and spicy blend of chilis, garlic, palm sugar, and lime juice used in the roast chicken marinade. Fermented shrimp paste is the other fundamental ingredient in sambal that Ting Dalton's marinade replaces with a similarly umami-rich fish sauce.