Grilled Chicken

Yesterday it was time to try the charcoal I made last week.

I picked up three chickens at the local market and cleaned them. Made a marinade from crushed black peppercorns, sugar, salt, lime and palm oil and coverered the chickens with it. A few handfulls of garlic, chilis and red onions was mixed with the rest of the marinade and stuffed inside the chickens.

Then I fired up my barrel grill with the newly made charcoal, and when it was ready the three birds was put indside and the lid closed.

A good friend showed up, and the next 90 minutes was spend talking and enjoying a few cold beers - which might be the reason I forgot to take a picture of the finished result. But I guarantee you, that these were the best grilled chickens I have made so far. Crisp on the outside, juicy and tender inside and very tasty and delicious.

Burning charcoal

Some time ago my wife gave me a charcoal kiln, made by a local guy from an old oil barrel, which I haven't had the time to try out yet. Last week we got a load of old hardwood logs from a familymember, and I decided that now was the time to try and burn charcoal for the first time.

I have now tried the kiln two times with the same result. About half of the wood is burned to perfect charcoal and the rest is inadequately charred wood.

After a lot of reading I think the problem is that my logs are to different in size - some of them too big for this small kiln. And then I'm probably closing the airintake too quick.

Anyways I still have a big bag of selfmade charcoal, that I will soon use to make grilled chicken.

Opening the kiln for the first time.

Half the wood looked like this.