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:

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.