BBQ Chicken with Finadene

CHamoru barbecue chicken is Guam's everyday cookout: split birds over half-drum grills at fiestas, roadside fundraisers, and the Wednesday night market at Chamorro Village. The marinade is shoyu, vinegar, crushed garlic and a lot of black pepper — simple, sharp, and applied for hours. The cooks baste with it the whole way through. The real seasoning happens at the table, where fina'denne' goes on by the spoonful.

Fina'denne' varies by household and that variation is part of it — lemon in some, vinegar in others, tomato in some, never in others. Constant across all of them is donne' sali, the small boonie pepper that grows wild on Guam. Off-island, Thai bird chilies or Hawaiian nīoi get you close. On the fire, the thing to respect is the sugar and shoyu in the marinade: both burn quickly, so the chicken runs indirect until it's nearly there and only takes direct heat for the last few minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, split into halves or cut into 8 pieces (or 3 lbs thighs and drumsticks)
• Marinade: 1 cup shoyu, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 8 garlic cloves crushed, 1/2 onion sliced, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1 Tbsp coarse cracked black pepper
• Fina'denne': 1/2 cup shoyu, 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, 1 small onion finely diced, 3-6 donne' sali or Thai bird chilies, minced, 1 chopped cherry tomato (optional), cracked black pepper
• Steamed white rice or Guam red rice
• Lemon wedges

Cook Sequence

1. Marinate the chicken 4 hours or overnight. Reserve a cup of the marinade separately and boil it 2 minutes — that's your baste. Never brush raw marinade on cooked chicken.
2. Mix the fina'denne' an hour ahead and leave it out. It is not cooked and it is not a marinade — it goes on at the table.
3. Two-zone fire, two kiawe chunks on the coals, 350°F on the cool side and a hot bed on the other.
4. Chicken skin side UP on the indirect side, lid down. 25-30 minutes, basting with the boiled marinade every 10.
5. At 155°F in the thigh, move the pieces skin side DOWN over the coals. 3-5 minutes, lid open, standing over it — the sugar in that marinade goes from lacquer to charcoal in under a minute.
6. Pull at 170-175°F thigh, 160°F breast. Thigh meat past 175°F is fine; breast past 165°F is dry, so pull pieces as they hit rather than all at once.
7. Rest 8 minutes skin side up on a rack, not a plate, so the crust stays crisp underneath.
8. Serve with rice, lemon wedges, and the bowl of fina'denne' in the middle of the table. Doused, not drizzled — that's the point of the dish.

Round Out the Plate

• Coconut Rice — the sweet base that carries a sharp, salty sauce
• Hawaiian Mac Salad — cool and creamy against shoyu char