Chicken Teriyaki

Chicken teriyaki is probably every children’s favorite Japanese food. I know I love this so much when I was young, and every single time my family went to a Japanese restaurant, I didn’t even look at the menu and said I want a chicken teriyaki meal.

Now that I’m a full-fledged adult, I eat out less and prefer cooking at home. And with this recipe, I can cook chicken teriyaki for myself and my family. These homemade chicken teriyakis are good, just as good as the ones in any good Japanese restaurant. I swear!

Ingredients for chicken teriyaki

Homemade teriyaki sauce

There is no need to buy special-purpose teriyaki sauce, especially if you have the following ingredients stocked in your pantry: soy sauce, sake, mirin, and sugar.

When it comes to sake, it is always better if you can find some decent Japanese drinking sake. Cooking-grade sake is okay too, though I prefer using drinking-grade sake. :)

For this chicken teriyaki dish, we will need these for the teriyaki sauce:

• 4 tablespoon soy sauce
• 4 tablespoon sake
• 4 tablespoon mirin
• 2 tablespoon sugar

Chicken teriyaki

For the chicken teriyaki itself, you will need:

• 4 chicken thighs, boneless with skin intact
• salt
• pepper
• 3 tablespoon oil

Cooking chicken teriyaki

1. Brown chicken

Pat dry chicken thigh, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat. Sear chicken thighs until browned on both sides. About 2-3 minutes per side. Set aside.

2. Teriyaki sauce

Wipe clean the frying pan (or use a clean one), add all teriyaki sauce ingredients into the pan and bring to a boil. Cook until sauce is thicker.

3. Coat chicken with teriyaki sauce

Once the sauce is thick, return all chicken thighs into the pan. Cook until the sauce turns into a glaze that coats the chicken.

4. Rest and serve

Turn the heat off. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes, then cut into bite-size pieces. Serve with steamed white rice.