Chicken Teriyaki

 10 February 2022

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, November 2021, recipe also available online.

While I have had meals in Japanese restaurants that I enjoyed, in general I am not fond of Japanese cuisine. One of the few things that I have made myself is Chicken Teriyaki, generally using a grill to cook the chicken. Seeing a recipe in Cook's Illustrated for this dish thus got my attention. It seemed simple enough to make, didn't require exotic ingredients, and I decided to try it.

Because you can't buy boneless, skin-on chicken thighs, four bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 1.6 pounds) were carefully deboned, trimmed, then cut into 1½-inch pieces, being careful to preserve the skin. These were combined with some sake and cornstarch and set aside. Soy sauce, sugar, and sake were combined in a small bowl and heated in the microwave to dissolve the sugar. About 1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger (much less than specified in the recipe) was placed in a fine mesh strainer and pressed to extract the juice into the soy mixture. The chicken was cooked in a skillet over medium-high heat, first skin-side down, then flipped over to finish cooking. After removing the chicken, the skillet was wiped clean with paper towels. The chicken was returned to the clean skillet, the soy mixture was added, and this was cooked for several minutes to thicken the glaze. Total preparation time was one hour.

The chicken was exceptionally tender and juicy. The nicely browned pieces of chicken, which seemed to promise some nice crispy skin, did not live up to this probably due to the final cooking with the sauce. I used much less ginger than in the recipe as we have had some overly spicy ginger dishes. The ingredient list is short and it only took an hour to prepare. Sake was the only ingredient that we didn't have and I was able to buy a small, 300 ml bottle. This dish is worth having again and with more ginger.