Frango assado com piri-piri — Portuguese grilled chicken with bird’s-eye chili — is the dish that built a thousand churrasqueiras, launched an international restaurant empire, and perfumes every Portuguese beach town at lunchtime. The town of Guia, in the Algarve, claims the crown; every Portuguese family claims its marinade is better.
The formula is deceptively simple: a spatchcocked (butterflied) chicken, a marinade of piri-piri, garlic, paprika, lemon and vinegar, and patient grilling with constant basting. The chili came home with Portuguese sailors from Africa centuries ago and never left.
This recipe works on a charcoal grill (the true faith), a gas grill, or under the oven broiler — with the piri-piri butter baste that separates real frango assado from ordinary grilled chicken.
Piri-Piri Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken (3½ to 4 pounds), spatchcocked
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 to 6 fresh piri-piri or bird’s-eye chilies, minced (to your courage), or 2 tablespoons piri-piri sauce
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- ⅓ cup olive oil
- 1 bay leaf, crumbled
- 2 teaspoons salt
- For the baste:
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon piri-piri sauce
- 1 garlic clove, minced
Instructions
- Spatchcock the chicken: cut out the backbone with kitchen shears and press the bird flat.
- Blend the garlic, chilies, paprikas, lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, bay and salt into a loose paste.
- Coat the chicken thoroughly, working some marinade under the skin. Refrigerate at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
- Grill skin-side up over medium indirect heat (or broil on a rack, skin down first) about 20 minutes.
- Melt the butter with the piri-piri sauce and garlic for basting.
- Flip, baste generously, and continue grilling, flipping and basting every 5 to 10 minutes, until deeply burnished and cooked through (165°F at the thigh) — about 45 minutes total.
- Rest 10 minutes, cut into pieces churrasqueira-style, and serve with extra piri-piri at the table.
Enjoy our recipes? Add Maria’s Cookbook as a preferred source on Google to see more of our content in your search results.
