food with my dude

Food with My Dude #22: Teriyaki Chicken

Since I’ve made teriyaki beef in a previous post, it’s only fitting that I got around to making an actual teriyaki chicken recipe, which I found on Cooking Classy. So, here’s another chicken recipe, I hope you don’t mind. This was similar to previous recipes that I’ve made in the past, but they all seem to taste slightly different. This one is a lighter sauce by far.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced into 1-inch cubes
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1 1/2 tbsp packed light brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp sesame oil 
  • 2 tsp peeled and minced fresh ginger [or 1/8 tsp is what I used]
  • 2 tsp peeled and minced fresh garlic [2 cloves]
  • 2 tsp cornstarch
  • Sesame seeds and chopped green onions, for serving [optional]

Price:

$

For this recipe, I used one full chicken package from Kroger, just so we’d have lots of leftovers afterwards. There’s usually about five chicken breasts per pack. I also doubled the teriyaki sauce to make sure it coated all the chicken.

After cutting up the chicken up in bite sized cubes, then let it cook. I don’t have any pans that are large enough for this amount of chicken. I don’t think I thought this through well enough to cook all of it in one pan, oops, but I made it work.

While the chicken overload cooked, I made the marinade mixture with these ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp packed light brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp sesame oil (optional)
  • 2 tsp peeled and minced fresh ginger [or 1/8 tsp of ground ginger]
  • 2 tsp peeled and minced fresh garlic (2 cloves)
  • 2 tsp cornstarch

Those are the original measurements, but the picture below is whenever I doubled them to result in the cloudy mixture.

I had to keep checking on the chicken since it cooked unevenly with how little room there was in the pan. It took a slightly bit longer since they were all piled on top of one another. Once it was cooked all the way through, I poured the teriyaki sauce in with the cooked chicken.

What I found to be a bit weird is that the directions didn’t tell me to drain the chicken or wipe the pan clean before pouring in the sauce. I let it cook like this for a few minutes and it didn’t thicken — maybe I had too much sauce or that, despite the directions, I was supposed to drain the chicken prior.

I took a gamble and didn’t drain the chicken beforehand, but I was slightly worried that it would water down the teriyaki sauce. After cooking the chicken longer with the lid on, I let it cook a few minutes longer lid-free on the Low setting. It still didn’t thicken. Oh well, I’ll try to drain it the next time to see if it’ll thicken up and coat the chicken better.

With the same garnishes as always, I topped it off with the green onions and sesame seeds. I realize how I use green onions and sesame so much, but they just go well with everything.

Taste: The picture doesn’t do the dish justice because it looks like bland chicken, but it actually had a nice slightly sweet flavor to it. I’m still disappointed that the sauce didn’t thicken up, but at least the chicken was still juicy and not overcooked, despite my futile attempts to thicken the sauce. The goal next time: thicken that chicken [sauce]. That was bad, but I saw the opportunity.

Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Heat level:

None at all. It’s a simply sweet teriyaki sauce.

I liked the flavor of this sauce, but it was still runny, so I’ll have to improve it in the future.

A 28-year-old seeking to live a thousand lives. Blogging and writing about some things that I love, which include succulents, books and music, and what I've been up to while living in Nashville, TN.

11 Comments on “Food with My Dude #22: Teriyaki Chicken

  1. Looks so good! My husband loves teriyaki and makes it as often as he can. One thing I’ve seen him do with like orange chicken as an example to thicken the sauce was use a cornstarch slurry towards the end and that thickens the sauce. Not sure if he has done that for teriyaki sauce or not, but idk if that would help you?
    Either way, I believe you that the chicken tasted good since my husband uses a recipe similar to that ๐Ÿ˜

    1. I made the teriyaki beef dish tonight like that where I waited until the sauce was hot to pour in the cornstarch/water mixture in and it worked.

      Maybe Iโ€™ll have to cook the sauce in another pan and do the same, then add the chicken. Itโ€™s interesting how that has such an effect to it. Iโ€™ll have to give it a try for this chicken! Does your husband make homemade orange chicken too, I think weโ€™ve talked about the dish before?

      1. Nice!
        And we might have already talked about it, I don’t remember. But we’ve made orange chicken in different ways and with other ingredients to see the different in taste and texture, etc. So far I liked the recipe my husband made recently better than everything else we’ve tried lol.

        1. I don’t remember if we have either, haha. But that’s awesome that you all have found a homemade orange chicken recipe! I’ve never had it at a restaurant, but the homemade has won me over!

          1. We love being able to recreate our favorite recipes at home, they taste better sometimes because you can tweak the recipe to suit your own taste ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Oh my gosh, “thicken that chicken [sauce].” I actually loved that lol, you got a smile out of me with that one, hehe!! <3 The photo the chicken cooking in the sauce in the pan looks SO good! Glad it turned out tasty even if you didn't drain the chicken and the sauce wasn't as thick as you hoped! We use the same soy sauce. ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. I’m so lame sometimes, haha, but I’m glad that you got a little humor out of it! It was a really good recipe overall. Stephen doesn’t like the store brand soy sauce, so we decided to stick with the Kikkoman brand, haha. he’s so particular! ๐Ÿ˜

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