Huli Huli Chicken

We love Huli Huli chicken! If you have tried Huli Huli chicken, we are fairly certain that you love it too. And if you have never tried Huli Huli chicken - well, then - try it, you will love it!!

Huli is Hawaiian for turn. Ernest Morgado "invented" Huli Huli chicken 1955 when barbecuing a batch of chicken for some farmers using his mother's marinade recipe. It became such a hit that he registered the trademark with the Territory of Hawaii in 1958 and with the US Government in 1965. Morgado cooked the chicken between two grills and when one side was done someone would shout "Huli" and the grills would be flipped over.

We've cooked our Huli Huli chicken on our Big Green Egg, a ceramic Kamado grill. Rather than flip the grill, we just turn the chicken every five minutes (shouting Huli Huli of course).

We first heard of Huli Huli chicken from a song called, of all things, Huli Huli Chicken, by the Barefoot Natives. We loved the song, and for that matter, the whole album, Slack Key Circus. The more we listened to it, the more we wanted to try this intriguing Huli Huli Chicken thing. So we looked it up on the internet and found lots of information and recipes for Huli Huli Chicken, most of them quite similar. The magic ingredients are soy sauce, brown sugar, frozen pineapple juice, catsup, rice vinegar, fresh ginger and garlic.

We mixed up a batch of marinade, let it soak into a cut up chicken, fired up our Big Green Egg, tossed on some soaked mesquite chips (the other secret ingredient), and turned and swabbed the chicken every five minutes. You have to "huli" (turn) your chicken every five minutes to prevent the brown sugar from burning. Take a look at that photo! It was hard not to jump right into the grill and dig in!

As the song says, "We love our huli huli chicken...grilled!