20 October, 2021
Savory Mango Habanero Chicken
This is a two-part recipe: A marinade and a sauce. The marinade is delicious, the sauce is incredible, and this recipe makes a LOT, so get ready to freeze some leftovers! You can adjust the heat level of this sauce by adding fewer peppers or using a milder hot sauce. Any long-time readers of Apartment Eats are likely aware that Hubby and I have an infatuation with spicy food, so if I say something is spicy, it’s gonna be spicy, at least by most people’s standards (and depending on the kinds of peppers you get — the ones I grow at home are MEGA hot compared to grocery store peppers for some reason). If you can’t stand heat at all, you can sub in a cayenne pepper and a comparable weight of orange bell pepper (so, like 1/4 to 1/3 of a pepper) for flavor. But I’ll judge you a bit.
Also, bear in mind that this is an OVERNIGHT MARINADE. If you let it sit for any less than eight hours, it’s not going to taste like much. If it’s dinnertime now and you’re reading this, prep for tomorrow because you will not regret the wait!
Ingredients
6 Chicken breasts, trimmed
For the Marinade:
3/4 cup Olive oil
1/3 cup Malt vinegar
5 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp Spicy hot sauce (I used Bravado Spice Co.’s Black Garlic Ghost/Reaper sauce — not a paid ad, it’s just really good hot sauce)
1 1/2 tbsp dried Basil
1 1/2 tbsp Smoked paprika
1 1/2 tbsp Garlic powder
1 1/2 tbsp Dried onion
1 1/2 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Pepper
For the Sauce:
1 tbsp Olive oil
1 medium Yellow onion, diced
5 Habanero peppers, diced
5 cloves Garlic
1 1/2 Mangoes, cubed
6 oz Tomato paste
1 cup Apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp Red pepper flakes
1 tbsp Ground mustard
1 tbsp Smoked paprika
1 tbsp Mustard seed, coarsely ground with a mortar and pestle
1 tbsp Ground ginger
1/4 cup Mango nectar (you can find this in the Hispanic food section of your grocery store; it’s sold in cartons here, as a beverage)
Water, to thin
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The marinade is simple: Put all the ingredients in a bowl, stir, add chicken, seal, stick it in the fridge. Let the chicken sit in the marinade for NO LESS than eight hours. Ideally, let it sit overnight.
Also worth letting sit while the chicken marinates is the sauce. If you serve it right away, it’s still good, but like any good sauce or salsa, if you let it sit for a few hours, the flavors mingle beautifully.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring the olive oil up to temperature and sautée the onions and habaneros and stir from a near distance while casually dying as hot capsaicin vapors fill your house. Let those cook over the heat together for about five minutes. Add your minced garlic and continue to cook for another minute before adding in the rest of the ingredients, save for the water, and bringing everything to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat to low for 30 minutes, keeping it at a simmer and stirring occasionally.
Once the sauce has cooked, use an immersion blender to carefully process the sauce until it’s smooth. Add some water to thin it out to your desired consistency. I personally kept it pretty thick. You can also wait to thin the sauce until after it’s cooled and set. Store the sauce in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
After the chicken has marinated for most of a day, preheat your grill to 450 degrees F. Cook the chicken for 30-35 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F, flipping every 10 minutes. Cover with the sauce and serve as-is, on rolls, or skewered.
