Tea-smoked Grilled Chicken with Star Anise & Orange

Black tea, orange zest and a host of aromatics give Tea-smoked Grilled Chicken with Star Anise & Orange a satisfyingly complex taste.

WE DON’T GRILL VERY OFTEN. Not sure why—we love grilled foods, and it’s no harder (or easier, for that matter) than other cooking methods. But over the years, we’ve stumbled across some techniques that have been showstoppers. One is the ancient Chinese technique of tea-smoking.

It infuses grilled foods with delicate, complex Asian flavors as varied as the tea-smoking ingredients you choose. For the chicken you see here, we used black tea, orange zest, Chinese five-spice powder, brown sugar and star anise. Uncooked rice is another key ingredient, serving as fuel to keep the other ingredients smoking.

For such an amazing outcome, it’s a wonderfully simple technique. The only special equipment you need is aluminum foil to hold the smoking ingredients. You’ll find the recipe as well as more background on the tea-smoking technique in this post from our archives.