Sweet Chilli Chicken & Pineapple Skewers

Ingredients

• 500 g chicken thigh fillets, cut into large chunks
• 1 x 227g tin pineapple chunks, drained, juice reserved
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 x 250g pre-cooked jasmine rice pouches
• 20 g fresh coriander, roughly chopped
• 2 limes, 1 juiced, 1 for serving
• 1 red chilli, thinly sliced, to garnish
• Crusty bread, to serve
• Dressed green salad, to serve

Method

1. Whisk the soy sauce, honey, chilli flakes, garlic powder, the juice of one lime and 2 tbsp of the reserved pineapple juice in a bowl until glossy. Taste it — it should hit sweet, salty, sharp and a whisper of heat all at once. Spoon a few tablespoons into a separate cup for basting; raw-chicken marinade never goes back near cooked food.
2. Season the chicken chunks generously with salt and pepper before they hit the marinade, then tip them in and turn to coat. Thread chicken and pineapple alternately onto skewers, packing snugly but not crushed. Rest for 10 minutes while the pan heats — long enough for the marinade to take, short enough that the lime juice doesn't start cooking the chicken.
3. Brush a griddle pan or heavy frying pan with the vegetable oil and set over high heat until it's smoking lightly. Lay the skewers down in a single layer with space between them — don't crowd the pan or they'll steam instead of char. Cook in two batches if you need to. 3–4 minutes a side, basting with the reserved marinade, until you see deep griddle stripes on the chicken and the pineapple is caramelised dark gold at the edges. The garlic powder and honey in the marinade can catch fast on this heat — watch it, and if the glaze tips past mahogany toward black, pull the heat back. Burnt sugar turns bitter in seconds.
4. While the skewers cook, tip the petits pois into a small pan with a splash of water and warm through for 2 minutes until bright green. Heat the rice pouches per the pack, then fork the peas through the hot rice with most of the coriander. Taste the rice — the soy on the skewers carries most of the salt to the plate, but the rice itself wants a pinch of salt to wake it up. Adjust now, not at the table.
5. Once the skewers are off the heat, splash the leftover basting marinade into the hot pan, let it bubble and tighten for 20 seconds until glossy and syrupy, then spoon it back over the skewers so they stay sticky rather than dry — that's the glaze becoming a sauce instead of drying onto the meat.
6. Pile the rice onto plates, lay the skewers over the top, scatter the extra coriander and sliced red chilli across, tuck a lime wedge alongside each plate and finish with a generous squeeze of lime juice over the charred chicken and pineapple.