Prue Leith's Favorite Chicken Marinade Is One Restaurant's Pride And Joy

Prue Leith has led one of the most accomplished lives in the culinary world, so when she compliments your chicken marinade, it's quite the honor. The Michelin-starred chef and host of both The Great British and American Baking Shows has not only run successful restaurants and written cookbooks, but has founded charities, chaired The Restaurants Association of Great Britain, and even written eight novels over a 65-year career. This is a woman with a lot of experience who knows every aspect of the food world inside and out. This makes it notable that in her new cookbook "Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom: Really Good Food Without the Fuss," she says she uses a supermarket sauce from the chain Nando's to make grilled chicken.

Founded in South Africa in 1987, Nando's is a chicken chain that operates in over 20 countries and is best known for its take on African piri-piri (or peri-peri) sauce. Piri-piri sauce is made from its namesake African hot peppers — vibrant red capsicums that can be 15 times hotter than jalapeños or more. With the huge popularity of the chain, Nando's has gone the route of many other restaurants and started bottling its signature sauce for supermarkets, and they clearly have a big fan in Leith, who says she uses it to make an easy spatchcocked chicken recipe on the grill. And good news, Nando's peri-peri sauce is available in the U.S. as well.

Despite Nando's origins in South Africa, piri-piri sauce is more closely tied to Mozambique, where it developed as a fusion between local tastes and those of Portuguese colonizers. The sauce is built around the piri-piri pepper, also known as the African bird's eye chile, but isn't always as hot as the pepper itself would suggest. In addition to crushed chiles, piri-piri sauce is made from lemon and ground black pepper with onions, vinegar, bay leaves, and oil. The chiles don't just lend heat, but a wonderfully complex flavor that can be tangy, sweet, and smoky. Because of all these other ingredients, piri-piri sauce can come in a variety of heat levels. Nando's offers five levels of heat ranging from extra mild to extra hot. We trust Prue Leith can handle the hot stuff, and you can try out varying levels depending on your spice tolerance.

The classic African and Nando's dish that Leith makes is piri-piri grilled chicken, but the richly flavorful and spicy sauce has few limitations to its uses. It makes a great marinade for any meat, and it's just as good spooned over fish filets or used as a dipping sauce for chicken tenders. Really anything grilled would be good with it, whether it's shrimp or cauliflower. Piri-piri sauce may not be as well-known in the U.S., but as Leith knows it's one of the world's great hot sauces — and you won't regret stocking your pantry with it.