Teriyaki Chicken

Teriyaki Chicken is a very popular Japanese dish and is so easy to make. The sauce is just a mixture of soy sauce, sake, mirin and sugar.  Just sauté the chicken and cook in the sauce (DO NOT marinate chicken in the sauce to make Teriyaki Chicken the Japanese way). It takes only 15 minutes!

Teriyaki Chicken (照り焼きチキン) is more commonly called tori no teriyaki (鳥の照り焼き) in Japan. Tori (鳥) means bird but chicken in this context.

It is one of the most popular Japanese dishes among Aussies and I presume in other parts of the world as well. At almost every Japanese restaurant in Sydney, you will find Teriyaki Chicken on the menu.

I often find that the flavour of the Teriyaki Chicken at restaurants is slightly Westernised and I can sometimes even taste garlic in it. But the recipe I am sharing today is the traditional Japanese way of making Teriyaki Chicken.

ABOUT TERIYAKI SAUCE

You can’t talk about Teriyaki Chicken without mentioning Teriyaki Sauce.

This is a very simple sauce that is made up of only four ingredients. But once you know the proportion of ingredients, it becomes so easy to cook flavoursome dishes in 5-10 minutes. Any dishes called ‘teriyaki’ something uses this Teriyaki Sauce.

The Teriyaki Sauce is made with 1 part soy sauce + 1 part sake + 1 part mirin + about ½ part sugar. I say ‘about ½ part sugar’ because you can adjust the sweetness to your liking.

Here is the sample photo of soy sauce, sake and mirin I use. At supermarkets in Australia, you might find different brands of mirin and cooking sake such as Bento brand. They are fine to use too. Please visit Japanese Dressings for more details about them.

Combine them together and mix well to dissolve the sugar. You can heat the mixture slightly to speed up the process of dissolving the sugar if you like.

This sauce is a very good sauce to have on hand. It keeps for weeks in the fridge and you can sauté or grill fish/meat/vegetables and pour the sauce over it. You could add grated garlic/ginger to vary the flavour too.

PREPARING CHICKEN for Teriyaki Chicken

I use chicken thigh with the skin on. I know the skin is fatty, but I think that the chicken looks nicer with the skin on when cooked, especially nicely browned.

But if you prefer chicken fillets without the skin on, that’s OK. You can also use chicken breast but you might find that the cooked chicken is slightly dry.

Thigh fillets are usually thick on both sides and thin in the middle. It is important to make the thickness of the fillet even.

Place a fillet on a cutting board, skin side down, and make a cut horizontally and outward where the meat is thick and butterfly it (see the photo below and the Video).

Using the tip of the knife, poke the skin randomly (see the Video). This will allow the Teriyaki Sauce absorb into the flesh better.

SECRET OF MAKING GREAT TERIYAKI CHICKEN

Have you ever experienced the teriyaki sauce not sticking to the chicken evenly and the sauce is somewhat mixed with oil? This is because you had too much oil in the frying pan before adding the Teriyaki Sauce to it.

The chicken is covered with oil and also the excess oil and the sauce splits as they do not mix well. To prevent this to happen:

• Do not add oil to the frying pan when cooking the chicken.
• Wipe away any excess oil in the frying pan just before adding the Teriyaki Sauce (see the photo below).

When you do the above, you will find that the sauce sticks to the cooked chicken and you will have a saucy Teriyaki Chicken.

Serving Teriyaki Chicken

Most Japanese meals are served in such a way that you can pick up and eat the food with chopsticks without needing to cut it. In this recipe, I sliced the chicken after it was cooked so that you can still see the whole fillet of chicken, and it is easier to pick up a piece with chopsticks.

But if you are eating Teriyaki Chicken with a knife and fork, you don’t need to slice the chicken.

I served Teriyaki Chicken with shredded cabbage but any green salads or boiled vegetables are OK. If you are using a dressing, I’d suggest a light one.

Teriyaki Chicken Don

If you place sliced Teriyaki Chicken over the rice with extra sauce poured on it, you get a Teriyaki Chicken don (Teriyaki Chicken on rice in a bowl).

Instead of shredded cabbage, you can grill or blanch vegetables to give extra colour to the dish. Below is a Teriyaki Chicken don with charred shallot/scallion stems and blanched snow peas that I just ate after taking these photos (yum, yum).

I cut the white part of shallots/scallions to 5cm/2″ long then cooked in a frying pan with no oil until they get burnt here and there. They go surprising well with the Teriyaki Sauce.

If you are making Teriyaki Chicken don, cook Teriyaki Chicken as per the recipe but increase the amount of Teriyaki Sauce by 50% so that more sauce will be poured over the chicken and dribbled onto the rice, making the rice so tasty.

I hope you like my version of Teriyaki Chicken.

Yumiko

P.S. 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 the new recipe in this post that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.