Thursday, May 1, 2025

Might This Be the Summer season of Sambal-Smashed Fried Hen

Why It Works

  • Smashing the rooster will increase the floor space for the sauce to cling to. The outcomes are crispy and tender bits, all of it loaded with taste.
  • Smashing additionally breaks up the rooster fibers, additional tenderizing it.

Ever since I noticed Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters share a smushed Cup O’ Pizza in The JerkI’ve been satisfied that almost all meals get higher whenever you obliterate them first. This conviction primed me completely for sambal-smashed fried rooster, which I first noticed on an Instagram reel—a uncommon second of instantaneous buy-in for me, on condition that my typical response to social media meals content material is knee-jerk skepticism.

The Instagram reel got here from an Australian restaurant that was doing its personal artistic spin on ayam geprek, a stylish Indonesian road meals of crisp fried rooster pulverized with sambal. “Pulverized with sambal” roughly sums up the entire idea—and all of the unhinged potential it guarantees: You are taking boneless fried rooster, you then smash it with sauce. That is it. The sauce might be sambal, after all, nevertheless it can be chili crisp, or anything you may dream up. It is onerous to consider what condiment would not be good on this.

One factor I completely love about this dish is that whereas, sure, you may make it from scratch with selfmade fried rooster cutlets and sambal, it’s the excellent improve to your favourite fast-food fried rooster. Simply purchase some fried rooster, take it dwelling, and smash it in a bowl or mortar and pestle with no matter condiments you’ve within the fridge or pantry. Pile it on contemporary rice, possibly throw some leafy issues on the facet in your day by day dose of vegetable fiber, and you’ve got a meal that is as scrumptious as it’s fast. No—extra scrumptious than it’s fast, as a result of it is so scrumptious that it is delicious-er than the three minutes it takes to smash it.

How scrumptious, you ask? The rooster, as soon as smashed, is each crispy and tender, each chew bathed in a lot taste. The sauce coats all of the crunchy bits of batter and is pressed into the fibers of meat, form of how sauce coats strands of spaghetti when a pasta is correctly made…besides that is rooster, not pasta, and never something like pasta. Put one other manner, that is the last word late-night, munchies-scratching, snack-attacking meals. I problem anybody to call one higher.

Anyway, I am placing the recipe under, which is form of ridiculous since you do not want a recipe. Smashing rooster with sauce is not precisely superior cookery on a technical stage. However on a conceptual stage, it is pure genius.

Might This Be the Summer season of Sambal-Smashed Fried Hen


Prepare dinner Mode
(Preserve display awake)

  • 2 to 4 items selfmade or store-bought boneless fried rooster

  • Do-it-yourself or store-bought sambal, chili crispor different flavorful sauce of your selection (see notes)

  • White ricefor serving

  1. In a mixing bowl or mortar and pestle, smash the fried rooster till pulverized into giant chunks. Spoon sufficient sauce on high to coat generously and stir and smash till totally mixed. Stir in additional sauce, if desired. Serve on rice.

    Critical Eats / Amanda Suarez


Notes

I encourage you to be an underachiever right here: Simply purchase the elements and smash them collectively. However in the event you should make this from scratch, the next recipes are good choices for the sauce:

  • Sambal belacan: Made with chiles, fermented shrimp paste, and a squeeze of lime, sambal belacan is essentially the most well-known and ubiquitous of Malaysian chile pastes.
  • Sambal Tumis: A wealthy and sophisticated chile paste that is a mainstay of the Malay kitchen.
  • Sambal Oelek: A easy scorching sauce that’s easy to make, however infinitely helpful.
  • Chili Crisp: A spicy, tingly, salty, crunchy, charming chile condiment.
  • XO Sauce: An expensive and flavorful condiment wealthy with dried seafood and cured ham.


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