This grilled marinated chicken curry recipe is so flavorful and delicious! It's like a mix between tandoori chicken and thai chicken curry. It's perfect if you've got a little bit of thai curry paste leftover and aren't sure what to do with it.
Why You'll Love it
Not going to lie, this delicious recipe for this grilled marinated chicken curry recipe happened by accident.
We had curry the night before and I had a few tablespoons left of curry paste. I didn't know what to do with it and didn't want to throw it away. But since it's so hot here in FL, we decided to marinate the chicken pieces in coconut milk along with the leftover Thai curry paste.
For added flavor, I added a few tablespoon of brown sugar, a little bit of grated fresh ginger, and some salt. I tasted the chicken curry marinade before adding in the raw chicken and it was so flavorful! I instantly knew it was going to be a hit.
We let the marinated chicken pieces sit in the fridge all day and then grilled this easy recipe since it was so hot out. The results were INSANE and the unique flavor blew us away! It was almost like a tandoori chicken meets Thai curry chicken recipe and we were instantly obsessed!
You'll love this marinated grilled chicken recipe because it has the perfect burst of flavor. It's sweet, savory, smokey and spicy. Plus the reserved marinade makes the most delicious creamy sauce that's so good over my rice cooker coconut white rice.
So let's get grilling this coconut chicken curry recipe!
Ingredients & Substitutions
- Chicken: You can use thinly sliced chicken breasts or chicken thighs in this marinated chicken recipe. If you're using bone-in chicken, it will obviously take longer to cook so for best results, make sure to adjust accordingly.
- Coconut Milk: Since I was working with a red thai curry ginger garlic paste, I went with coconut milk. However, you could use Plain Yogurt (or greek yogurt) to give it more of an indian food spin. The yogurt marinade might require a different amount of sugar so keep that in mind.
- Red Curry Paste: You could use a Thai yellow or green curry paste if you had some lying around. If you're taking the indian cuisine approach, try using your favorite indian curry. Or you could try using Jamaican curry powders with some olive oil, ghee, vegetable oil coconut oil.
- Fresh Ginger: Feel free to leave the fresh ginger out if you don't have any. The curry paste already has a ton of flavors on its own.
- Brown Sugar: You could also use honey, white sugar, palm sugar or coconut sugar.
- Salt: Kosher salt was used in making this recipe. Table salt will taste too salty.
- Lime Juice: You could swap it for lemon juice if you want to.
- Green Onion: If you're not into green onion, try chopping up some fresh coriander (aka cilantro).
- Optional Additions: Try adding other aromatic spices like red chili powder, cumin seeds, coriander seed, turmeric powder, ginger garlic paste, cayenne pepper or even some garam masala powder.
How to Make it
Making this grilled curry marinated chicken is so easy! All you need to do is follow the simple steps below.
Make the Curry Marinade: Begin by grabbing a medium sized glass container, large bowl or sturdy plastic bag and add your coconut milk, red curry paste and brown sugar. Grate in the fresh ginger and stir in the salt. If you're adding any whole spices, I recommend grinding them up and adding them to this delicious chicken marinade. Remove one and a half cups of the marinade (before putting in the chicken!) and place it in a small bowl or jar. Keep this in the fridge until you're ready to grill your chicken.
Marinate Chicken: Add the chicken pieces and cover with plastic wrap. In my opiinion, the best choice is using chicken thighs since there's no prep work involved, but if you're using chicken breasts, slice it into thin pieces so it grills quickly and evenly. Let the marinated chicken sit in the fridge for at least 4 hours up to overnight.
Let Chicken get Room Temperature & Preheat Grill: Once you're ready to cook this easy grilled curry chicken recipe, pull the raw chicken out of the fridge. Sit the chicken on your countertop for 30 minutes to lose its chill. Meanwhile, preheat your grill over high heat.
Grill the Chicken: Once the grill is hot, add your chicken pieces and drop the temperature to medium heat. Grill each piece until golden brown and slighly charred, flipping as needed. Since cooking time will vary, I recommend using a meat thermometer to test doneness. Once the internal temperature of the dark meat registers at 175-190 degrees (or 165 degrees F for white meat) pull the chicken and plate it. I recommend using this instant-read thermometer if you are in the market for one.
Reduce the Sauce: While the chicken is resting, it's time to make the sauce which has so much flavor. Add the reserved sauce to a sauce pan over medium-high heat. Once the sauce starts to boil, turn it to medium-low heat and let it simmer and reduce until thick and glossy.
Sauce the Chicken & Serve: Pour the sauce over the chicken and top with chopped green onions and a squeeze of lime juice. Place any leftover in an airtight container and keep in the fridge for up to 4 days.
What goes with it
I recommend serving this delicious grilled marinated curry chicken recipe with some of these tasty side dishes:
- Easy Coconut Rice Recipe (Made In The Rice Cooker)
- Soy Sauce Marinated Drunken Eggs
- Cold Thai Noodle Salad Recipe with Sesame Peanut SauceHow to make Fresh Mango Salad (Thai Inspired Recipe)
- Coconut Kale Noodles
- Asian Avocado Salad with Cucumbers and Furikake
For more grilled chicken recipes, check out my Harissa Chicken recipe, BBQ Grilled Chicken thigh recipe or this Huli Huli Chicken Recipe.
Recipe
Grilled Marinated Chicken Curry Recipe (With Coconut Milk)
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2.5 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
- 1 13.5 oz can Coconut Milk
- 3 tablespoon Red Curry Paste
- 1 teaspoon Fresh Ginger grated
- ⅓ cup Brown Sugar
- ½ teaspoon Kosher Salt
- ½ Fresh Lime juiced
- 2 tablespoon Green Onions thinly sliced
Instructions
- Add coconut milk, red curry paste and brown sugar to a large bowl. Grate in the fresh ginger and stir in the salt. Remove one and a half cups of the marinade (before putting in the chicken!) and place it in a small bowl or jar. Keep this in the fridge until you're ready to grill your chicken.
- Add the chicken pieces to the marinade and cover with plastic wrap. Let the marinated chicken sit in the fridge for at least 4 hours up to overnight.
- Before grilling, pull the raw chicken out of the fridge. Let it sit on your countertop for 30 minutes to lose its chill. Meanwhile, preheat your grill over high heat.
- Once the grill is hot, add your chicken pieces and drop the temperature to medium heat. Grill each piece until golden brown and slighly charred, flipping as needed. Once the internal temperature of the dark meat registers at 175-190 degrees F (or 165 degrees F for white meat) pull the chicken and plate it.
- While the chicken is resting make the sauce. Add the reserved coconut curry sauce to a sauce pan over medium-high heat. Once the sauce starts to boil, turn it to medium-low heat and let it simmer, stirring often, and reduce until thick and glossy.
- Before serving, pour the sauce over the chicken and top with chopped green onions and a squeeze of lime juice. Enjoy!
Tia
Made this for 50 people and got a lot of very high praise. Served with naan, rice, grilled squash, onions, tomatoes, and cauliflower. It took a team of four of us to make it happen.
MacKenzie Smith
Aww yay! Love to hear it!!