Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

Today’s dish, Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce, is served in a thick glossy sauce that covers the cute drumettes. The sauce is made with just 5 ingredients, and it is so tasty. The addition of eggs makes it a perfect dish.

As the recipe name suggests, the sauce contains vinegar. But you don’t taste the sourness in the sauce very much, unlike the flavour of Sweet and Sour Pork Meatballs. If you taste the sauce immediately after you cook this dish, you will notice the faint flavour and the fumes from the vinegar in the sauce. But after leaving the dish overnight, you hardly recognise the vinegar in the sauce.

About Drumettes

A chicken wing consists of three sections – drumette, wingette, and wing tip. The drumette is the largest section of a chicken wing.

Supermarkets and chicken shops often sell only the drumette portion of the chicken. But even if you have whole chicken wings or V-cut chicken wings (wings without the tip), you can easily get drumettes from these.

Each section is connected by joints, and it is quite easy to cut through the joint to separate each section of the chicken wing.

Of these three sections, the drumette is the meatiest, and it contains least fat. The meat is tender, and you can enjoy its light flavour. The drumette is best suited for deep-frying, simmering, and soup.

In Japanese cooking, you often make a vertical incision on the thickest part of a drumette before cooking. This allows the meat to come off the bone easier when you eat it, particularly with chopsticks. It also lets the flavour of the simmering sauce or soup penetrates the flesh. The umami from the bone can also be extracted easily.

But if you are deep frying a drumette, you don’t make an incision. This is  so that you can contain the flavour of the chicken within itself.

I must confess – today’s recipe was only created because I collected so many drumettes in my fridge. I am currently working on a new recipe project using chicken wings. This recipe does not require the drumette portion of the wings. I have so far attempted several trials with 8 wings each time, and every time I tried this project recipe, I’ve ended up with 8 drumettes in the fridge!

What’s in my Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

The main ingredients are chicken drumettes and boiled eggs. Chicken & egg is a perfect combo as you can see in my recipe Oyako-don (Chicken and Egg on Rice).

• Drumettes
• Boiled eggs
• Oil

Your boiled eggs can be hard boiled or soft-boiled. I served 1 boiled egg with 3 drumettes per person in my recipe but you can adjust the balance between the two.

Simmering Sauce

• Rice vinegar
• Soy sauce
• Cooking sake
• Sugar
• Water
• Sliced ginger

I don’t use cornflour or flour to thicken the sauce. With the amount of sugar in the sauce, it becomes like a syrup when the sauce is condensed.

How to make Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

The process of making Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce is quite simple. Once you have sautéed the drumettes, you can basically leave them alone while simmering.

1. Make an incision into the thickest part of each drumette.
2. Sauté the drumettes in the frying pan until the surface of the chicken pieces is slightly charred.
3. Add the Simmering Sauce ingredients to the pan and cook for about 15 minutes with a lid on.
4. Add boiled eggs to the pan and cook further without the lid until the sauce becomes syrupy.

By sautéing the drumettes before simmering, you can seal the surface of the flesh so that the flavour of the chicken is enclosed within the meat.

Simmering time can vary slightly depending on the size of your pan and the strength of the heat.

Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce is a perfect make ahead dish. You can keep it in the fridge for 4-5 days. You can also freeze it (without the boiled eggs). When chilled, the sauce becomes gelatinous. You need to reheat the dish including the sauce, so that you can enjoy the syrupy tasty sauce around the drumettes.

In the Meal Ideas section, I listed Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce for the main dish. But it can be a side dish with a smaller number of drumettes and half an egg per person. It can also be a good snack to go with drinks.

Yumiko

5 from 2 votes

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Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

25 mins

 

Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce is served in a thick glossy sauce all around the cute drumettes. The sauce is made with just 5 ingredients, and it is so tasty. The addition of eggs makes it a perfect dish.

The dish keeps well in the fridge and is a great make ahead dish.

Total time does not include time to make boiled eggs.

Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.

Recipe Type: Japanese snacks, Main, Side

Cuisine: Japanese

Serves: 4

Author: Yumiko

Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)

• 12 Drumettes (about 700g / 1.5lb in total, note 1)
• 4 boiled eggs (hard boiled or soft boiled)
• 1 tbsp oil

Simmering Sauce

• 6-7 tbsp rice vinegar (note 2)
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 tbsp cooking sake
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 100ml / 3.4 fl oz water
• 5g /0.2 oz ginger thinly sliced

Serving (optional, note 3)

• Blanched Chinese mustard green , cut into 5cm / 2" long pieces

Instructions

1. On each drumette, make a small incision along the bone where the meat is the thickest.

2. Add oil to a frying pan and heat over medium high heat. Sauté the chicken to brown the surface of the chicken pieces.

3. Wipe off the excess oil in the pan with kitchen paper.

4. Add all the Simmering Sauce ingredients to the pan, place a drop lid over and bring it to a boil.

5. Reduce the heat to simmer and cook for about 15 minutes with a lid on.

6. Remove the lid and the drop lid, add the eggs to the pan and turn the heat up (note 4). Cook for further 5 minutes or so. Rotate the eggs to evenly stain them with the sauce while cooking.

7. The sauce thickens and becomes bubbly (see the step-by-step photo in post), which indicates that the sauce became syrupy. When the bubbles become larger and the small amount of sauce is left, turn the heat off and remove the pan from the cooktop (note 5).

8. Rotate the drumettes in the sauce to coat them with sauce.

9. Transfer 3 drumettes onto each serving plate. Have each boiled egg (note 6) and place them next to the chicken, cut side up. Place a bunch of green leaves on the side.

Recipe Notes

1. The drumette is the meatiest portion of a chicken wing. Please refer to the section About Drumette in the post.

If your drumettes are extremely large or small and the total weight is far heavier/lighter than mine, you will need to adjust the number of drumettes required.

2. If you don’t have rice vinegar, you can substitute it with apple cider vinegar.

3. The yellow from the boiled egg brightens up the otherwise very brown dish. But I think adding a bit of green makes the dish even more appetising.

4. At this stage, you should still have enough sauce in the pan to cook the chicken and the eggs. But if you only have a very small amount of sauce left, add some water.

5. When the sauce starts becoming syrupy, it does not take long to overcook it. So, you need to remove the pan from the hot cooktop to prevent further cooking.

6. I use a thread to cut a boiled egg into half. Wrap the thread around the middle of the egg, then pull each end of the thread apart.

7. You can keep Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce for 4-5 days in the fridge. When chilled, the sauce becomes gelatinous. You need to reheat the dish including the sauce so that you can enjoy the syrupy tasty sauce around the drumettes. You can also freeze the chicken (without boiled eggs) for a month.

8. Nutrition per serving.

serving: 320g calories: 565kcal fat: 37g (57%) saturated fat: 9.5g (48%) trans fat: 0.1g polyunsaturated fat: 7.2g monounsaturated fat: 16g cholesterol: 349mg (116%) sodium: 1090mg (45%) potassium: 497mg (14%) carbohydrates: 15g (5%) dietary fibre: 0.1g (1%) sugar: 13g protein: 36g vitamin a: 8% vitamin c: 0.7% calcium: 3.8% iron: 11%