The Meatwave

I was never a chicken fajita type a guy—why settle for comparatively flavorless and dry chicken when you can have juicy, tender, and beefy skirt steak, a king among cuts. I held onto that unwavering opinion for a long time, until one day a few years I devised a marinade for chicken fajitas so delicious that I not only found myself enjoying them, I actually endorsed it as a recipe you really need to make. Even though I've remained steadfast in my use of beef for fajitas since then, there's been a lingering desire to make those chicken fajitas again. As I was working on a whole slew of skewers last summer, I thought why not give myself my fix, and threw a chicken fajita skewer into the menu line up with my other lamb, beef, and chicken creations.

So what makes that marinade so good in the first place? Well, it starts with a base of cilantro and lime juice, which embeds a fresh and bright flavor that breathes life into listless chicken. Then there's raw garlic for bite, cumin for earthiness, red pepper flakes for heat, and dark brown sugar to add color and balance out a little of the acidity.

I add in olive oil as well and give the entire concoction a spin the blender until it's as smooth as it's going to get. What comes out is a beautifully bright green marinade packed with a flavor that gives a unique Tex-mex character to anything it touches.

In this case, it was chicken thighs. I originally had devised the marinade to make my plucky enemy—the chicken breast—something worth eating. Thighs, on the other hand, are juicy, delicious dark meat, and I can totally get behind that. So I figured if the marinade did a breast justice, it would fare even better here.

After a couple hours in the marinade, I removed the chicken and threaded them onto water soaked wood skewers. In between each piece of meat, I placed the usual fajita subjects—onion, red pepper, and green pepper. I had cut everything to be a fairly uniform size for even cooking on the grill.

I placed the bright green, saucy skewers on the grill over direct heat. The hot fire singed the edges of the veggies and started adding color to the chicken right away.

As it cooked, those kebabs developed a lovely golden brown color with some light green spots that combined to give a hint of all the flavor to come.

These skewers were every bit as delicious as I remembered those chicken fajitas being a couple years ago. Actually, they were even better in my mind because the layered flavor of marinade was paired with more tender, moist, and tasty chicken thighs. The meat had a pleasing mixture of freshness, earthiness, and a touch of heat that gained a true fajita feel with the crisp-tender onions and peppers. You could even empty the contents of the skewer in a warm flour tortilla to make your fajita experience totally complete.

Published on Tue Apr 28, 2015 by Joshua Bousel

You Might Also Like