Fork & Embers Recipe
Hawaiian Huli Huli Chicken with Pineapple Glaze
The Story
Huli Huli chicken is one of those foods that feels much older than it actually is.
The dish was created in Hawaiʻi in 1955 by Ernest Morgado, a poultry businessman who cooked marinated chicken for a gathering of farmers. The chicken was based around a teriyaki-style family sauce and cooked in halves over the fire.
As demand grew, Morgado needed a way to cook a lot more chicken at once. The halves were placed between large metal racks that could be flipped together rather than turning every piece individually. When it was time to turn the racks, workers would call out “huli,” the Hawaiian word for “turn.” That command eventually became the name of the chicken.
Huli Huli chicken eventually became especially associated with community fundraisers. Schools, churches, sports teams and other organizations could sell chicken to raise money, and Morgado's cooking system made it possible to produce an enormous amount of food without a restaurant kitchen. At a 1981 fundraiser for ʻIolani School, his operation reportedly cooked more than 46,000 chicken halves.
The original sauce recipe, however, was never publicly released.
That makes recreating Huli Huli chicken a little different from reproducing a dish with a documented original formula. We know Morgado's sauce was described as teriyaki-style, but there is no legitimate recipe we can point to and claim is his exact original.
This version instead starts with the flavors found in an older Huli Huli chicken recipe published in The Honolulu Advertiser in the 1970s and builds from there. The goal is not to pretend we've uncovered Morgado's secret recipe. It's to make a version rooted in the history of the dish while still producing the best chicken we can at home.
WHAT MAKES HULI HULI CHICKEN DIFFERENT
Huli Huli chicken isn't simply chicken coated in a sweet Hawaiian barbecue sauce.
The foundation is much closer to teriyaki: shoyu, sugar, ginger and garlic, with white wine appearing in the older recipe that inspired this version. Those ingredients make sense within Hawaiʻi's local food culture, where generations of immigration—particularly from Japan—had already made flavors like shoyu and teriyaki familiar long before Huli Huli chicken appeared in 1955.
My version keeps that savory foundation but adds pineapple juice, mirin and a small amount of toasted sesame oil to the marinade.
The finishing glaze takes things a little further with brown sugar, rice vinegar, Hawaiian chili pepper water and Worcestershire sauce. It's sweeter and more concentrated than the marinade, but it's used sparingly.
That's important.
The goal isn't chicken buried under barbecue sauce. You want smoke, char, rendered skin and savory chicken underneath a thin mahogany-colored lacquer.
WHY THE CHICKEN KEEPS GETTING TURNED
The huli part isn't just a fun name.
Repeatedly turning the chicken is one of the defining ideas behind the original cooking method. Morgado's crews could clamp large quantities of chicken between metal racks and turn an entire batch over the fire at once.
We're obviously working on a much smaller scale, but I still like applying the same principle.
Instead of putting the chicken down and leaving it alone until some predetermined time has passed, watch the color and keep turning it as it cooks.
One side starts getting dark?
Huli.
The skin needs more time facing the fire?
Huli again.
That repeated exposure to the heat helps render the skin while gradually building the roasted and lightly charred exterior that makes this style of chicken so good.
You don't need Morgado's giant racks to use the technique.
THE FIRE MATTERS
Huli Huli-style chicken eventually became closely associated with kiawe wood and charcoal.
Kiawe is related to mesquite, which makes mesquite an especially practical substitute for cooks on the mainland who can't easily source kiawe.
You also don't need a dedicated smoker to make this recipe.
I cooked mine over an open charcoal fire using a Weber Smokey Mountain with the water pan removed, which puts the chicken several feet above the coals while still giving it direct exposure to the fire.
But the important part isn't owning that cooker.
The idea is simply to cook the chicken over moderately intense heat, allow some smoke and live-fire flavor to develop, and turn the chicken throughout the cook. A charcoal grill is an obvious alternative, but the recipe can also be adapted for a gas grill, pellet cooker or even an oven.
I'll break those methods down separately in the recipe instructions so you can use what you already own.
WHY THE GLAZE GOES ON LATE
There is plenty of sugar in the finishing glaze, which means putting it on too early is an easy way to burn the outside before the chicken is finished cooking.
Instead, most of the cook is about developing the chicken itself.
Let the skin render. Let it pick up color. Let the charcoal and wood do their thing.
Once the chicken is approaching its final temperature, start brushing on very thin layers of glaze, turning between coats.
Three or four light applications work much better than drowning the chicken in one heavy layer.
Each coat tightens against the hot skin and the next one builds on top of it. By the time the chicken is done, you're looking for a glossy, dark mahogany exterior with a little char around the edges—not a thick layer of sticky sauce.
A HISTORICALLY GROUNDED, NOT “AUTHENTIC,” RECIPE
There isn't an available Ernest Morgado recipe for us to faithfully reproduce.
His sauce remained secret, and modern recipes have filled in the blanks in very different ways. Some contain pineapple. Some don't. Others use ketchup, honey, bottled barbecue sauce or considerably more sugar.
So I'm not calling this Morgado's original recipe.
Instead, I started with what we can actually document about older Huli Huli chicken, preserved its savory teriyaki-style foundation and then made adjustments that I think improve the finished chicken.
There are some modern touches here.
That's intentional.
History gives us the foundation. The rest is about making some damn good chicken.
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