Huli Huli Chicken; Hawaiʻi’s Roadside BBQ Dish ¦ ʻONO! Hawaiʻi's Food Culture.

Huli huli is, I mean, technically in Hawai'i, it's two turn. It's just Hawai'i's version of rotisserie chicken. But you really want to get that sugar caramelization, and to me, that's what makes a good huli chicken, right? Moist, not dry. Crispy, juicy, and tender. It has to be that way. When he cuts the chicken and he goes on the plate, we need to see the juices come out. It's just been a roadside dish for many generations. Ono, Hawai'i's food culture, sponsored by Hawai'i Gas and Aloha State Daily. Can we get a whole chicken cut up? Yeah, cut up. Okay. Anything else? Rice, coleslaw. And a rice, and a coleslaw. You have to keep a consistent heat. That's pretty much it. We kind of monitor by hand. It's a typical Saturday on O'ahu's North Shore. Here, hungry customers line up for Ray's signature huli huli chicken. My dad built a wagon. Before we used to haul trailers out, but he bought a wagon and created a pull-out grill, and now it's like a lunch wagon where we can cook like this. So we'll do events when we're asked to, or fundraisers more out, the smaller ones. Yeah, we started in Kona. 1984. We did a little fundraising out in Kona. Growing up, he always told me, he would tell me ... I didn't believe him. He was like, You're gonna run the business. I was in my twenties when he said this, and I was like, Yeah, I don't know. I think I want A.C. and, you know, a regular job. But he called it, and I love it. It's like a way of life, not really a job. It's kind of like our life. Every culture has chicken of some form, and every culture has a way of making chicken. So, you know, when you come to Hawaii as a tourist, it seems familiar. Like, Oh, here's a chicken I haven't had yet, so I want to try it. In Hawaiian, huli means to turn or flip over. The persistent motion ensures an even cook and tender meat. So my understanding, you know, is huli huli means to flip over. Right? So there's this constant motion of flipping over. We season it before, like the day before, just because it has to move so quickly. But his recipe, we can just literally sprinkle it on right before we cook, which was what you could do, and then it goes onto the fire. But it's basically the fire that is the real process of it all. Crispy, juicy, and tender. It has to be that way. When he cuts the chicken and it goes on the plate, we need to see the juices come out. We need to see it coming off on the skin, on the table, you know. Eating that huli huli chicken, eating that marinade of shoyu and chili water, chili pepper, honey, ketchup, brown sugar. If you do it at a low heat, you're getting a little bit of burn, a little bit of char, but you really want to get that sugar caramelization. To me, that's what makes a good huli chicken, right? Moist, not dry. And it's great, you know. To me, that's what huli huli chicken is. The first rod on the right is the one we threw on first, and the fire was really hot, so the skin got really crispy, so Richard moved it to the far side where it's a lot cooler. We're in Hakipuʻu Valley. It's a small ahupuaʻa on the Windward side. My family's owned property out here for 40-something years now, and we haven't done huli chicken for a really long time. For Nick and his family, huli huli chicken is a new business venture. Yeah, so the original property is actually Coral Kingdom. Huli huli chicken is our staple, which is why we kind of rebranded and named it Yomi Huli Huli Chicken, separated the restaurant from the whole retail. The recipe of the chicken has sort of refined over the years, and it's finally gotten to the point where we're really confident with it this past year. So this is my mom's take and recipe, and it's something I grew up with, and a lot of the people on this part of the island grew up with, so huli huli chicken is just really good in general. Like, rotisserie chicken is hard to beat. On average on a day, we probably pump 300 chickens out in a day, and on busy days it can go up to maybe 500. Serving hundreds of chickens every day is not an easy task. From the wood all the way to the marination process and to the dry rub and then getting it on the grill, it's a really complex process. So we defrost the chickens overnight, and we have the defrosted chickens cleaned, gutted, and prepped and ready to go for the marinade. What Franz is doing right now is he's butterfly cutting it right down the chest. Most importantly, though, it's when we throw the marinade inside, it kind of gets inside of the body of the chicken, too, when it's filleted and cut open. So all the filleted chickens that we have, we'll marinate it overnight in these buckets, about 50 chickens each, and we kind of let it soak for 24 hours, and then the next morning we get it ready for our dry rub. We have maybe five or six rods that we run every day. We pin the body of the chicken onto the rod, and we snap the legs and wings with these pinning rods. When we swing it over to the grill, it's sort of now just musical chairs. We're just playing with the fire, the strength of the heat. Hula hula chicken is all about low and slow. You know, you can't get flare-ups, you cannot get hot spots, because you're drying out the chicken. You get flare-ups, you're burning the chicken, you're burning the sugars. You want that sugar to slowly caramelize. That's the key part. So you've got to go low and slow. The good food takes time, and it's always going to be that way. It's hard to do. You can't quite get that same texture and flavor in an oven, right? You still have that smoky flavor from the firewood and everything, but yeah, it's a very unique process, especially when rotisserie is done with firewood. Do you want to try one? Okay. Do you want the two-ounce or the four-ounce sauce? The four-ounce. Okay. Hula hula chicken, to me, is synonymous with fundraising, right? This is before Zippy's Chili Tickets or Regal Bakery or anything like that. And to me, that's part of our DNA about uniquely Hawaiian, uniquely Hawai'i. How's it going? Good. Yeah? Easy? This is a fundraiser for a baseball team, and you do a fundraiser, we'll ask you to help us out. But normally, there's not this many people that come out. Thank you so much. Thanks. We'll call it on this side, okay? Thanks. Good to see you. Hula hula chicken is a timeless tradition that continues to bring friends and family together. Prepared with love and care, hula hula chicken holds a special place in the heart of Hawai'i's food culture. We like helping people. We like watching the kids like, Oh, we went to so-and-so, and we won the championship, and they're stoked. And like, we help them get there. People are like, Hope you never leave. And I'm like, I hope you don't ever stop cooking chicken. And that makes us feel like getting up every day and like, Okay, get it done. And a lot of times, we'll see like the same people every weekend, you know. It feels good. It's a great job.