Remembering Mom’s Chicken Barbecue

The Philippine’s no.1 fast food chain in terms of branches and market share recently introduced its newest major offering called the Jollibee Chicken Barbecue. This made me remember the cooking prowess of my late mom. One of her specialty is the chicken barbecue.

The Ingredients / Recipe

Mom was a great cook. Among a myriad of dishes, the chicken barbecue was one of her expertise. I still remember as a child where she marinades the chicken with a variety of spices including soy sauce, calamansi, black pepper, garlic cloves, Chinese herbs, and more.

The “more” is really more since during the 1980s and 90s, there were not much ready-made marinating sauces in the market like what we have today. Perhaps, just a brand or two. What we had at home were even in Chinese characters since they were be bought from Ongpin (a local Chinatown area). Something typical for a Chinese household.

The Procedure

After mixing the spices on a big bowl, she would dip the chicken parts and massage the meat thoroughly like your favorite masseur. Sadly, the chicken would not be able to feel the relaxing sensation since they are already lifeless. 🙂

After a while, she would put them in plastic ice cream tumblers of Magnolia.

Labels eventually changed to something else, maybe Nestle. Selecta canisters came into the picture by the mid-90s.

She would then pour the rest of the marinade formula from the basin into the tumblers, cover them with the lid,  and store them in the refrigerator.

Mind you, she does not do this overnight for tomorrow’s cooking. She does this weeks ahead. Yes, weeks.I think the logic behind is that the longer it is marinated, the better. The marinade would be more absorbed through the skin and into the chicken meat.

The next day, she places the formula into the freezer. This is so until a day before it is to be cooked where she places it back to the “frigidaire“.

As a kid, I’m not really around the kitchen when the cooking commences since I hated the heat and smoke. So to make the long story short, I get to see the chicken barbecue again only as a finished product at our dinner table. And as expected, it was a champion chicken BBQ – juicy and delicious. The taste sinks in to the deepest part of the white meat.

As one commercial would say, ‘licking it to the bones.’

And we’re not yet even talking about the sauce.

But I’d be sharing to you a secret about how she prepares the sauce: She concocts it almost similar to the marinade (minus the chicken meat, of course). I think she just adds something extra to qualify it as a sauce, or something like that.

That’s what is left of my memory of my mom and her ultra special chicken barbecue. It has been more than seven years now since she left and I haven’t had any chicken barbecue getting close to it. But the flavorful memory was so good its imagery lasts.