Jamie Oliver’s gnarly peanut chicken

Jamie Oliver’s gnarly peanut chicken with lime & chilli is a quick and easy 5-ingredients recipe using a chicken breast. The whole thing comes together in 15 minutes and is perfect for a weeknight supper.

I recently sent out a request on Instagram and Twitter for people’s favourite recipe using chicken breasts and I got so many suggestions. I prefer using this particular cut in a dish with a lot of sauce like my healthier veggie-loaded butter chicken curry or my chipotle chicken enchiladas.

If I’m in a hurry I love to flatten a breast with a mallet and soak it in my favourite prego sauce. This gets quickly pan-fried for an instant supper or popped into a Portuguese roll for the best at-home takeaway-style meal.

If I’m in less of a hurry I’ll do my chicken breast stuffed with pork, sage and apple or chicken and mushroom stroganoff. There were a lot of suggestions to crumb and fry it like my favourite chicken Parmesan schnitzels or a piccata, but I wanted something a little different.

Someone mentioned Jamie Oliver’s Gnarly Peanut Chicken with lime & chilli from his book 5 Ingredients’ and I knew it was the one I wanted to try.

I got two really big free-range chicken breasts from Son of a Butcher – one of my favourite local butchers, in my recent market box from Ucook, and they were around 200 grams each.

The box also included lovely organic limes from Simply Fresh, so these formed two of the five ingredients for this recipe. Peanut butter, garlic and chilli made up the rest.

Reminiscent of a Thai satay sauce, I didn’t feel this topping needed anything except perhaps fish sauce which I might use next time. The peanut butter had enough sweetness to balance out the sour in the lime juice and zest, and the garlic and chilli brought some heat into the mix.

For all my chicken recipes, take a look here.

You might also like:

Creamy chicken with ravioli and spinach

Jamie Oliver’s fantastic fish pie

Roast chicken with white wine, herbs & garlic

Ottolenghi’s roast chicken and 3 rice salad

Tequila, lime & honey chicken

My veggie-loaded butter chicken curry

Roast chicken with orange and ginger

Jamie Oliver’s gnarly peanut chicken with lime & chilli

Jamie Oliver’s easy gnarly peanut chicken with lime & chilli

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 large chicken breasts
• 1 Tbsp olive oil + extra for finishing
• 2 limes zest and juice
• 4 cloves garlic crushed
• 2 – 3 heaped tablespoons peanut butter smooth or crunchy
• 1 – 2 red chillies finely chopped (or a pinch of dried chilli flakes)
• Salt & pepper

Instructions

• Turn your oven grill on and position the first rack about 10-15 cm from the top.
• Cut the chicken in a criss-cross shape about 1/3 of the way into the flesh. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and then season with salt & pepper and the finely grated zest of one of the limes. Grate the zest from the other lime, and set aside
• Place a 26cm ovenproof skillet on medium-high heat and put the cold chicken breasts into the pan, cut side down.

While that starts cooking, mix the following ingredients into a small bowl:

• Juice from the 1.5 limes, 2 – 3 heaped tablespoons peanut butter, the crushed garlic, as much chilli as you can handle and a little hot water to loosen the mixture to a spoonable consistency.
• Flip the chicken breast over and cook the underside for about a minute and then spoon over the peanut sauce. Place it under the grill for about 5 minutes until the edges start getting brown and as Jamie Oliver says, ‘gnarly’.
• Serve with a light drizzle of olive oil and the zest of the remaining lime, and lime wedges from the remaining half.

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