A few weeks ago I randomly woke up with the urge to make Nando’s at home. I don’t even know why, I don’t enjoy cooking like that. Cooking gives me nothing but stress.
But I wanted to do it so here it is!
Everyone has a different Nando’s order, but I typically get some chicken, it has to be hot of course, peri-peri chips, garlic bread and halloumi sticks. So all this is what I made.
Video Tutorial
Breakdown of the process
Like I mentioned, we’re making 4 different things, the peri-peri chicken, the garlic bread, the peri-peri chips, and the halloumi.
The peri-peri chicken
You want to make this first, just so that the chicken has time to marinate in the fridge.
All we are doing is making the peri-peri sauce, adding this onto the chicken, then leaving this in the fridge.
I recommend leaving the chicken to marinate overnight, but 1 hour works too.
The garlic bread
For this all you need to do is make a garlic butter. This is just made out of garlic, salted butter and parsley.
Then once you are are ready to make the garlic bread, spread the butter onto some bread, then put this in the oven for a bit.
The peri-peri chips
I didn’t want to go through the effort of making the chips from scratch.
So instead I just got some frozen chips, air-fried them (you can cook them however you want) and then I sprinkled some store bought peri-peri salt over it.
The halloumi
Out of everything, this took the least amount of time. Just get some halloumi, cut it into sticks and then cook these in a pan until crispy.
The peri-peri sauce
So the first thing we are going to make is the peri-peri sauce for the chicken.
Making this is actually very easy, I thought there would be a lot more to it to be honest.
But essentially all you need to do is blend some seasonings and a few other other ingredients together.
However, one thing you can do to make the flavour of the sauce much better, is to roast some of the ingredients first.
Roasting the ingredients
Before blending everything together, I roasted the bell peppers, onions, garlic and chillies together.
To do this, all you need to do is add them onto a tray, drizzle some oil over them and then cook them in your oven until they become slightly charred.
The reason why I did this was for flavour. Roasting these ingredients add a little smokey flavour to the peri-peri sauce.
It’s completely optional but the extra flavour is a nice addition.
The seasonings
Here are the seasonings I used:
- Salt
- Smoked paprika
- Ground cayenne pepper
- Chilli flakes
- Dried oregano
- Black pepper
I also added some lemon juice and olive oil. I don’t know if these count as seasonings.
You can use whatever seasonings you want, make the chicken with your favourite ones. Same with the quantities too, I included how much of each seasoning I used, but use as much or as little as you want!
The chicken
So I used a whole chicken, that was separated into 2 breast pieces with the wings attached, and then 2 whole leg pieces.
You of course can use whatever pieces of chicken you want. If your favourite part of the chicken is the legs, just use legs. Or instead of the whole leg, you could just use thighs. Or maybe make peri-peri wings instead.
It totally up to you, you don’t need to go by what I said in the recipe card below.
Cooking the chicken
I don’t know exactly how Nando’s cooks their chicken. I thought they just fully cook it on a grill.
But I Googled it and Google told me that they cook it in the oven first and then put it on a grill….I don’t know.
But I cooked mine in the oven.
To cook whole pieces of chicken, I just put them in a tray, cover it with some tinfoil and then leave it in the oven for 1 hour – 1 hour 30 minutes.
This is the way I’ve always seen my mum cook chicken, and it always works for her. So I cook it like this too.
Whiles the chicken is in the oven it will cook in it’s own juices which will leave you with super soft juicy juicy chicken.
Once the chicken had cooked, I uncovered it and put it under my grill (or you might call this a broiler) for like a minute. I just wanted to make the skin a little crispy.
If you do this though, keep an eye on it. I accidentally burnt the wings a little….but its fine extra toasty-ness is nice sometimes.
The garlic bread
Nando’s makes their garlic bread with Portuguese rolls, I couldn’t find that so I ended up just using ciabatta rolls instead.
Personally, I feel like ciabatta isn’t my favourite for garlic bread.
It’s good, but too many holes you know. I feel like breads that have less holes, soak up the butter better. Whereas with ciabatta, the butter just kinds of sits inside of the holes….if that makes sense.
Anyway, all I’m trying to say is, any type of bread works. If you want it to be more like the Nando’s garlic bread, use a crusted bread roll.
A few tips when making the garlic bread
- Roast your garlic first – roasting your garlic in the oven, instead of just using raw minced garlic, will give the garlic bread a much nicer, toastier flavour.
- Use salted butter – ok unsalted does work too, but then I recommend adding some salt when you add the other ingredients.
- Toast the bread after cooking – you can either do this in the oven, unwrapped. Or just in a pan. I’ve found that if you don’t toast it for a few minutes after it has been baked whiles wrapped in tinfoil, it can taste a little too juicy. Which most of the time juicy is a good thing but juicy bread is not the goal here.
Here are a few other savoury recipes that I think you might like:
Nando's
Made At Home
Ingredients
Servings: 2
- For the peri-peri sauce:
2 red bell peppers
2 red onions
6 cloves garlic
8 bird's eye chillies
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons chilli flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons olive oil
- For the chicken:
1 whole chicken, separated into 2 breast pieces with the wings attached, and 2 legs.
- For the garlic bread:
1 garlic bulb
140g salted butter, softened
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 crusted bread rolls, any work but I used ciabatta
- Extras:
Some frozen chips and peri-peri salt to go with it
Some halloumi
Directions
- Making the marinade:
- Pre-heat your oven to 220c/425f.
- Cut the bell peppers in half and remove the seeds, cut your onions in half, then also cut the green parts of the chillies off.
- Place all of this onto a tray along with your peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil over everything, then cook cook these in your oven until everything is wrinkly and slightly charred. This took about 30 minutes for me.
- Once done, leave these to cool for 10 minutes.
- After they have cooled down, place these into a blender or food processor, along with the rest of the ingredients for the sauce. Blend until smooth.
- Cut a few slits in your chicken, then add this into a bowl and add the sauce on top. Mix until all the chicken is fully covered with the sauce. Cover and leave this in the fridge for at least an hour, overnight is better.
- Making the garlic butter:
- For the garlic bread, get your garlic bulb and cut the top off. Just so that the garlic is exposed.
- Add this onto some tin foil, drizzle a little bit of olive oil over it, then wrap it in the tin foil.
- You want to cook this in a 220c/425f oven for 40 minutes. I recommend doing this the same time you roast the ingredients for the peri-peri sauce.
- Once done, leave to cool down. Once cooled, squeeze the garlic out into a bowl. Add the butter and parsley into this bowl and mix everything together.
- This is your garlic butter, you can just leave this at room temperature and use whenever your ready to make the garlic bread.
- Cooking the chicken:
- Pre-heat your oven to 220c/425f.
- Place your chicken into a tray or dish. Make sure to add any extra peri-peri sauce that might be left in your bowl.
- Cover this with tin foil and cook for about 1 hour - 1 hour 30 minutes.
- After my chicken was cooked, I put it under my grill for a minute or two, just to get some crispiness on top, but you don't need too. Don't walk away from this though, it can burn easily.
- Making the garlic bread:
- Get one of your bread rolls and cut it in half, then spread the garlic butter onto both sides. Put the halves back together then wrap the bread roll in tin foil. Do this with the other roll too.
- Place these in your 220c oven for 20 minutes. Then take them out, unwrap the rolls, place them onto a tray with the garlic butter side facing up, and put it back in the oven for 5-10 minutes. This is just to make the top of them a little crispy, you could also do this in a pan.
- The extras:
- Either deep-fry, bake or air-fry your chips. Then sprinkle some peri-peri salt over them.
- For the halloumi, cut it into strips and cook them in a pan until crispy on both sides.
- Plating:
- Everything has been made now, just throw it all onto somes plates then enjoy!
