Chicken Satay Recipe with Peanut Sauce

Thai inspired chicken satay recipe with a creamy, rich peanut sauce for dipping. Marinate chicken in our easy turmeric spiced coconut and ginger marinade. Then, thread onto skewers and cook until golden brown. It’s excellent.

Whenever I’m at a Thai restaurant, I always order chicken satay! I love it so much. Golden pieces of chicken marinated with spices, garlic, ginger, and coconut milk. It’s truly one of my favorite things, which is why I am so happy to share this at-home-friendly chicken satay recipe with you!

This recipe is actually quite simple. You’ll blend the marinade ingredients, pour it over chicken, then marinate for half an hour (or longer if you want). Then, thread the chicken onto skewers and cook through. The peanut sauce is just as easy. Add a handful of pantry ingredients to a saucepan and heat through. For more recipes like this, see our Thai chicken salad or yellow chicken curry.

Key Ingredients

• Chicken: We love chicken thighs since they turn out tender and juicy, but chicken breasts work really well with this recipe, too. Either way, use boneless, skinless chicken and cut it into 1-inch pieces.
• Coconut Milk: The great thing about this recipe (both the chicken satay skewers and the peanut sauce), is that you only need one can of coconut milk and if making both the chicken and sauce, will end up using pretty much the entire can. Go for full-fat coconut milk, and give it a really good shake before measuring it out for the marinade and sauce.
• Sugar: You will use brown sugar (light or dark) for the marinade and the peanut sauce.
• Fish Sauce: A standard ingredient in Thai cooking. While there are Thai fish sauce brands, we usually have Red Boat fish sauce (a Vietnamese fish sauce) in our pantry and find it works just fine here. We also use it when making our sesame ginger shrimp marinade, Vietnamese pho, and Thai green curry.
• Lime: You’ll use fresh squeezed lime juice for the marinade and the peanut sauce, so buy a few.
• Garlic and Ginger: Fresh is best for these and is used in the marinade. Since we blend the marinade together, there’s no mincing or grating for this recipe.
• Spices: These really make our chicken satay smell and taste incredible. You’ll use ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, pepper, cinnamon, and salt.
• Homemade Peanut Sauce: We are both obsessed with this sauce and it is fantastic with the chicken. You’ll combine peanut butter (use natural, unsweetened or homemade peanut butter) with a few ingredients you have already used for the marinade like coconut milk, brown sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce. Then, you will need soy sauce and a little Thai red curry paste (store-bought is fine, but we do have a homemade red curry paste if you are interested).

How to Make Thai Chicken Satay

If you’ve glanced down at the recipe below, it might look a bit lengthy, but let me tell you that the hands-on time for both the chicken and sauce is super low! The length is really only due to the ingredient list and the handful of pantry spices you’re going to blend into the marinade. So stick with me, okay?

First, you’ll make the chicken satay marinade, then marinate. We do this in a tall vessel with our immersion blender, which means it takes less than 5 minutes. If you don’t have an immersion blender, we highly recommend getting one (it’s magic for making mayonnaise), but for now, you can use a regular blender instead. Smash and peel your garlic. Peel and roughly chop your ginger, then pile everything in. Blitz for 10 to 15 seconds until smooth, then pour the marinade over your chicken. Toss and marinate for 30 minutes in the fridge (or longer if you have the time).

Next, thread the chicken onto soaked skewers and cook. We use 10-inch wooden skewers for this since they fit nicely inside our 12-inch grill pan, but if you don’t want to take time skewering, you can always cook the chicken pieces separately. A grill pan is great for getting those little browned spots, but again, if you don’t have one, use a regular skillet. Or, grill them on an outdoor grill!

When cooking these chicken satay skewers, we keep to a medium heat and allow the marinade to slowly brown and caramelize, which gives the inside of the chicken time to cook through. If at any point you notice them browning too much, lower the heat a little.

Finally, make the peanut sauce and serve. As the chicken is finishing up or resting to the side, you can make the quick peanut sauce. Add peanut butter, coconut milk, brown sugar, lime juice, soy sauce, fish sauce, and a tiny bit of red curry paste (it’s worth it!) to a small saucepan and heat over medium. As they warm up, you might notice that the sauce separates (see the first photo). It’s also going to look too thick. Don’t worry!

Once the sauce is warm, whisk in a little water and watch as the sauce smooths and turns glossy (sort of like how tahini smooths out when we make our tahini sauce).

You can see in the next photo what the water does. Now we have an emulsified, dippable sauce that is just perfect for serving next to our chicken satay. If you are feeling fancy, scatter some chopped peanuts and cilantro over the chicken for serving. We can’t wait for you try this one!

How to Serve Chicken Satay

Our favorite Thai restaurant has these skewers on their appetizer menu, but you can absolutely turn this into dinner! Here are three ways our family serves them:

• Make a chicken satay salad with a bed of crunchy lettuce, shredded cabbage, and carrots. Add the chicken and chopped peanuts, then drizzle the peanut sauce over the top as a salad dressing. You could also swap the bed of veggies for this avocado cucumber salad (it would be so good!).
• Make a plate with sliced cucumbers or a cucumber salad and coconut rice. If you’ve not tried our coconut rice before, this chicken recipe is the perfect time to use it. We cook the rice as usual, but swap half of the water for coconut milk.
• Turn dinner into an appetizer spread, then build your plate as you like. More ideas that work nicely alongside this chicken are our spicy edamame, chicken spring rolls, and our sugar snap pea salad.