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Home » Main » Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

July 27, 2021 By Yumiko 11 Comments

Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce

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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.

Hero shot of Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce served in a bowl.

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.

Showing chicken wings sections and cutting the joint to detach the drumette from the wingette.

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.

Picking the half-eaten drumette with chopsticks.

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!

Zoomed-in photo of Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce.

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

Ingredients for Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce.

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.

Step-by-step photo of simmering chicken drumettes in sweet and sour sauce.

  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.

To-down photo of Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce in a bowl.

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.

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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%

 

Meal Ideas

A typical Japanese meal consists of a main dish, a couple of side dishes, a soup and rice. I try to come up with a combination of dishes with a variety of flavours, colours, textures and make-ahead dishes.

Today’s main dish has a pronounced flavour of sweetness. The volume of the main dish is not large either. So, I decided to serve pumpkin croquettes as a side. These have quite a different flavour from the main dish and are very filling.

A refreshing salad goes well with the strongly flavoured main dish and deep-fried side dish. The Dried Tofu Skin Soup can be either clear soup or miso soup, although I will probably pick miso soup.

  • Main: Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce – today’s recipe, make ahead
  • Side dish 1: Pumpkin Croquettes – make ahead crumbed pumpkin balls and fry on the day
  • Side dish 2: Konbu Seaweed Salad with Cucumber – or other plain salad
  • Soup: Dried Tofu Skin Soup Two Ways – pick either clear soup or miso soup
  • Rice: Cooked Rice

MEal idea with Hero shot of Simmered Chicken Drumette in Sweet and Sour Sauce served in a bowl.

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Filed Under: All Recipes, Chicken, Collections - Quick Meal, Egg, Main, Sides

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Barb says

    August 2, 2021 at 10:56 am

    Oh Yumiko, this recipe is delicious. I used chicken thighs (bone in), it was amazing and so very easy to make. Each of the ingredients are in my pantry….. Thank you so much.

    Reply
  2. Kumiko Shipman says

    July 30, 2021 at 10:23 pm

    What brand of cooking Sake do you use?

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      July 31, 2021 at 11:05 am

      Hi Kumiko, I use Takara brand cooking sake which does not contain salt. Here is the info about cooking sake with the photo of the brand I use.

      Reply
  3. Eva says

    July 28, 2021 at 10:30 am

    Hi Yumiko, the recipe looks easy and the dish looks tempting. However I don’t know what to cook with the rest of wings. Can I use the whole wings for this recipe? or can I substitute with chicken drumstick? Thanks for great recipe

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      July 28, 2021 at 11:24 am

      Hi Eva, my suggestion would be to use wingettes in addition to drumettes and cook the same way.

      Reply
  4. Barb says

    July 28, 2021 at 8:58 am

    Hey Yumiko, this sounds so delish. Can you please advise what a drop lid is?

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      July 28, 2021 at 9:41 am

      Hi Barb, per my reply to Angela, please see the link here.

      Reply
  5. Angela Murray says

    July 28, 2021 at 5:58 am

    Please could you tell me what a drop lid is?

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      July 28, 2021 at 9:39 am

      Hi Angella, I forgot to add the link which explains what a drop lid is. I now added the link in the recipe card. Thanks for asking. Drop lid is called ‘otoshibuta’ in Japanese. Here is the link.

      Reply
  6. Dee says

    July 28, 2021 at 12:18 am

    Hello YUMIKO, this looks fantastic. Right up my street. Ear marked the entire meal set for the weekend. Thanks for a great site

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      July 28, 2021 at 9:35 am

      Hi Dee, I think it will be a great meal!

      Reply

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Hi, I’m Yumiko!

I was born and raised in Japan and migrated to Australia with my family in 1981. I got tired of my kids constantly asking me for their favourite Japanese recipes, so I decided to collate them in one place so they can help themselves - and now you can too! Read More…

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