Saltwater Brewery - What's Brewing

Week four: sweet heat to close out Mexican month

This is the last Thursday of September, so it's the last week of Mexican month at the Thursday Night Table. The month started with chicken tinga simmered in LocAle, moved to the grill for carne asada marinated in Screamin' Reels, and slowed down last week with carnitas braised all day in Sea Cow. It finishes back on the grill.

This week's can is Passion Pit. It gets simmered with honey, lime and as much habanero as your table wants, then brushed onto grilled chicken thighs in the last five minutes, just long enough to turn sticky without burning. Cool mango salsa goes on top, so every bite has some sweet, some heat and something fresh to settle it.

This one is a backyard dinner. The brewery has no kitchen (food on site comes from rotating food trucks), so the grilling happens at your place.

The beer: Passion Pit, Fruit Ale, 4.2% ABV / 12 IBU

Passion Pit is our Fruit Ale, 4.2% ABV and 12 IBU, and that second number is why it belongs in a glaze. As beer and honey cook down to half their volume, any bitterness in the beer gets more concentrated, and Passion Pit starts with very little. What comes out of the saucepan is a round, sticky glaze with nothing harsh at the edges.

The glaze uses 3/4 cup. The note under the shopping list covers the rest of the can.

Shopping list

Serves 4 to 6. Prep: about 25 minutes. Cook: about 35 minutes. Start to finish: about an hour.

For the chicken

• 2 1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 8)
• 1 tbsp neutral oil
• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ancho chile powder or sweet paprika
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder

For the Passion Pit glaze

• 3/4 cup (6 oz) Passion Pit Fruit Ale
• 1/3 cup honey
• Juice of 1 lime (about 2 tbsp)
• 1 garlic clove, finely grated
• Pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2 to 1 habanero, minced (for Mild, just a small piece for grown-ups' plates; see Dial the heat, and wear gloves)

For the mango salsa

• 2 ripe mangoes, peeled and diced (about 2 cups)
• 1/2 small red onion, finely diced
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• Juice of 1 lime
• Pinch of kosher salt

To serve

• Warm corn tortillas or cooked rice
• Lime wedges

About the can. A 12 oz can holds 1 1/2 cups, so the glaze uses exactly half. The other half is a cold pour for whoever is working the grill. Resist tipping the whole can into the saucepan: twice the liquid means twice the simmer, and the honey starts to darken and catch before the glaze is thick enough to brush.

Grill night, step by step

1. Season the chicken. Pat the thighs dry with paper towels and toss them in a bowl with the oil, salt, cumin, ancho powder and garlic powder until every piece is coated. Wash your hands, and anything the raw chicken touched, before moving on. About 5 minutes.
2. Simmer the glaze. In a small saucepan, stir together the Passion Pit, honey, lime juice, garlic, salt and the habanero for your heat level. Bring it to a simmer over medium heat; it foams up at first, then settles down. Simmer 12 to 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until it has cooked down by about half and coats the back of a spoon. It thickens more as it cools.
3. Split the glaze before any brush touches it. Pour about a third of the glaze into a small bowl and set it aside for the table. The rest is your brushing glaze. The brush that goes on the chicken never goes back into the table bowl.
4. Make the salsa. Stir the mango, red onion, cilantro, lime juice and salt together in a bowl, then refrigerate it until dinner. About 10 minutes.
5. Set up a two-zone grill. Heat one side of the grill to medium-high, about 400 to 450°F, and leave the other side on low or off. Clean the grates and oil them lightly.
6. Grill the chicken without glaze. Lay the thighs over the hot side, close the lid, and cook 4 to 5 minutes per side, 8 to 10 minutes total, until they are well marked.
7. Glaze the tops. Move the chicken to the cooler side, brush the tops with glaze and close the lid for 2 minutes. Honey scorches fast over direct flame, which is why the glaze waits until now.
8. Flip, glaze, and toss the brushing leftovers. Flip the pieces, brush the other side and close the lid for 2 to 3 minutes more. Then throw out whatever is left in the brushing bowl; that brush has been on chicken that was not cooked through yet.
9. Check for 165°F. Push an instant-read thermometer into the thickest piece; it should read at least 165°F. If it doesn't, close the lid for a few more minutes and check again. Move the cooked chicken to a clean platter, not the one that carried it out raw, and let it rest for 5 minutes.
10. Serve. Spoon the mango salsa over the chicken and set out the table glaze (plus the beer-free one, if you made it), lime wedges and warm tortillas or rice, so everyone can build their own plate.

The two food-safety moves. 165°F is the USDA's safe minimum internal temperature for poultry, and the FDA's safe food handling guide lists the same 165°F for poultry parts. That FDA guide also says never to put cooked food on a plate that held raw poultry unless the plate has been washed in hot, soapy water, and not to reuse a marinade from raw food unless you boil it first. A brushing glaze deserves the same caution, which is why the table glaze gets poured off before the brush comes out and the brushing leftovers get tossed.

Dial the heat

Habanero is a very hot pepper. The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University puts an orange habanero it tested at 250,000 Scoville Heat Units, on its list of the 10 hottest chile peppers it has tested. One small pepper carries a lot of heat, so decide how much goes in the saucepan before the glaze goes on the stove.

Mild. Leave the habanero out of the saucepan. For grown-ups who want the heat, stir a little minced habanero into a spoonful of the table glaze on their own plate. This is the path for anyone who is heat-shy. For kids' plates, use the beer-free mango-nectar batch below, which has no beer and no habanero.

Medium. Half a habanero, with the seeds and white ribs cut out before you mince it, to take the edge off.

Hot. A whole habanero, minced with its seeds.

Whichever level you pick, wear disposable gloves to cut the pepper, wash the knife and board right away, and keep your hands away from your eyes. The mango salsa has no pepper in it at all, so every plate gets a cool spoonful.

One family note: the glaze is made with honey, and the NHS says not to give a child honey until they're over 1 year old. That goes for the mild glaze too.

On the table with it

Drink what you cooked with: Passion Pit, cold, in a glass next to a plate of charred, sticky chicken and cool mango.

For everyone skipping the beer, make mango-lime agua fresca. Blend about 2 cups of diced mango (about 2 more mangoes) with 3 cups of cold water and the juice of 2 limes, strain it if you like it smooth, stir in a little sugar to taste and pour it over ice. It makes about a pitcher and takes five minutes. Put 2 more mangoes, 2 limes and a little sugar on the list if you're making it.

What's left of the alcohol

Start with what goes in. Three-quarters of a cup of Passion Pit holds about a quarter of a fluid ounce of alcohol (about 7.5 mL), and that's the whole batch of glaze, before it sees any heat.

The USDA's Table of Nutrient Retention Factors, Release 6 lists what stays behind when alcohol is stirred into a dish and cooked. For a 15-minute bake or simmer, it lists about 40 percent of the alcohol still there. A 12 to 15 minute simmer lands at or just short of that mark, so plan on about that much, or a bit more, staying in the glaze. The table has no row for five minutes of brushing on a grill, so we won't count on the grill to burn off the rest.

Put together, that's roughly a tenth of a fluid ounce of alcohol (about 3 mL) spread across 4 to 6 plates, and not all of the glaze gets eaten. A short simmer keeps more alcohol than a long braise does. It's a small amount, but it isn't zero.

Want none at all? Simmer a small separate batch of glaze with mango nectar in place of the beer and a little less honey, and pour off a spoonful of that batch as the table glaze for those plates before its brush comes out. Brush those pieces with their own brush and keep them apart on the grate. Add mango nectar to the shopping list if you're making this batch.

Thursday Table: 15% off Passion Pit to-go

Coming by? See what's on at the brewery this weekend before you head over.

Where to find Passion Pit

Passion Pit gets around South Florida, so ask for it wherever you buy beer, and if it isn't in the cooler, ask the shop whether they can order it. Or pick it up at the taproom at 1701 W. Atlantic Ave, Delray Beach, FL 33444, the first building off the I-95 Atlantic Ave exit. Food on site comes from the rotating food trucks.

Taproom hours: Mon 1–7 · Tue–Thu 12–10 · Fri–Sat 12–11 · Sun 12–8.

We don't ship beer or sell it online. The website is merch only, shipped within the USA.

Next Thursday, October opens German month at the Thursday Night Table with LocAle, our Golden Ale, in beer brats and beer cheese.

Please drink responsibly.