Chicken Teriyaki
鶏の照り焼き
Tori no teriyaki
鶏の照り焼き — teri, a glaze's shine; yaki, grilled.
Chicken thighs started skin-down in a cold pan for crisp skin, then glazed in a four-ingredient reduction of soy, mirin, sake and sugar with no cornflour.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Resting
- 5 min
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Sesame
- Soya
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Method
Stir the soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar together until the sugar dissolves. That is the whole sauce — no garlic, no ginger and no cornflour, which would turn it opaque and claggy.
Pat the chicken thighs dry and lay them skin-side down in a cold frying pan with the oil, then set it over medium heat.
Cook without moving them for 10-12 minutes. Starting cold renders the fat out slowly so the skin crisps, and it will release itself from the pan when it is ready.
Turn the thighs and cook for 4 minutes more, then tip off the rendered fat — left in, it makes the sauce greasy and stops it clinging.
Pour in the sauce, raise the heat to medium-high and cook for 4-6 minutes, spooning it over and turning the chicken, until it reaches 74C and the sauce has reduced by half to a glossy, translucent film.
Rest the chicken for 5 minutes, then slice it across into 1cm strips and lay over rice.
Spoon the pan sauce over, scatter with spring onion and sesame seeds, and serve.
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What to expect
- Taste
Salty and sweet in balance, with a depth from the fermented soy and the sake that a sugar-and-soy mixture alone does not have. It should taste savoury first and sweet second; the bottled version reverses that.
- Aroma
Caramelising soy, which is one of the more appetising smells there is and fills a kitchen in the last two minutes.
- Texture
Crisp skin, tender thigh, sticky glaze.
- Sound
The sauce bubbling hard as it reduces.
- How the flavour moves
Salt first, then sweetness, then a long fermented savoury finish.
- Serve it
Hot over hot rice.
- Goes with
Steamed rice and something pickled or sharp — cucumber, or pickled ginger. A cold beer.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Beginner.
- Cost
Low.
- Equipment
One frying pan.
- When to make it
A weeknight, in forty minutes.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
The sauce reduced by about half, translucent and glossy, clinging to the chicken in a thin film rather than sitting around it.
- And it feels like
Crisp skin, juicy thigh, and a glaze that is sticky rather than thick.
- Food safety
Chicken at 74C/165F instantaneous (USDA), or 70C for two minutes / 75C instantaneously (UK Food Standards Agency). Thighs are forgiving and the sauce stage takes them well past it.
- Where it goes wrong
- Cornflour, which makes it opaque and claggy.
- A hot pan at the start, which seizes the skin instead of rendering it.
- Leaving the rendered fat in, so the sauce is greasy and will not cling.
- Not reducing far enough, so it stays thin and runs off.
- Reducing too far, when the sugar catches and turns bitter.
- Chicken breast, which dries out during the sauce stage.
- If it does go wrong
Thin sauce: keep reducing and keep spooning. Bitter: the sugar caught; start the sauce again, it takes two minutes. Greasy: the fat was not poured off. Skin not crisp: it went into a hot pan, or was moved too early.
- Making it ahead
The sauce keeps indefinitely in the fridge and is worth making in quantity.
- Keeping it
Three days in the fridge.
- Reheating
A pan on low with a splash of water. The skin will not stay crisp.
- Freezing
Freezes for two months, sauce and all.
- Leftovers
Cold in a rice bowl or a sandwich, which is a Japanese lunchbox standard.
- Scaling it
Doubles in a wide enough pan; the chicken needs to sit in one layer.
- Substitutions
Dry sherry for sake. If mirin is unavailable, use 4 tbsp sake with an extra tablespoon of sugar. Salmon is the other classic protein and takes the same sauce and about 8 minutes.
- Dietary swaps
Contains soya and gluten — soy sauce is brewed with wheat, which surprises people, and tamari is the gluten-free alternative. Dairy free, egg free and nut free. Salmon or firm tofu both work with the identical sauce.
- Shopping for it
Real mirin — hon-mirin — rather than 'mirin-style seasoning', which is glucose syrup with flavouring and is noticeably worse.
- Keeping the cost down
Thighs rather than breast, cheaper and better. Mirin and sake keep for a long time and are cheapest from a Japanese or Chinese grocer.
- Sustainability
Chicken is the lowest-footprint common meat and thighs are the less-demanded part of the bird. The sauce works identically on firm tofu and on salmon, so the same recipe covers a plant version without adjustment. Soy sauce, mirin and sake all keep for months, so nothing here is bought for a single meal.
- Nutrition
Reasonable. The sugar is real but the quantity across four portions is modest.
- Worth it?
Four ingredients, no starch, and a cold pan to start. Everything most people know about teriyaki comes off a bottle and none of it is needed.
Where it comes from
- Origin
Japan.
- Also called
Teriyaki.
- Said out loud
teh-ree-YAH-kee.
- What the name means
Teri means lustre or shine and yaki means grilled or pan-fried. The name describes the finish, not the flavour, which is the single most useful thing to know about it.
- History
Teriyaki is a technique documented in Japan from the Edo period: grilling fish or meat while brushing on a glaze of soy, mirin, sake and sugar in layers, so it builds a shine. It is most traditionally applied to fish — yellowtail teriyaki is the classic. The chicken version, and the bottled thick sweet sauce sold under the name in the West, are twentieth-century American developments strongly associated with Japanese-American cooks in Hawaii, who adapted the glaze with local ingredients including pineapple juice and brown sugar.
- Why it matters
Very widely known abroad in a form that differs considerably from the Japanese one, which makes it a useful case in how a technique becomes a product.
- When it is eaten
A weeknight dinner, and a lunchbox staple in Japan.
- The traditional way
Glazing in layers while grilling, so the sugars caramelise progressively.
- How it changed
It became a bottled sauce, thickened with starch, sweetened heavily and often given garlic, ginger and pineapple — which is a different product with the same name.
- Regional variations
Fish teriyaki, especially yellowtail and salmon, is the more traditional application. Hawaiian versions include pineapple juice.
- How this version differs
Four ingredients and no thickener, and the chicken started skin-down in a cold pan. The recipe is written partly to say what teriyaki is not, because the bottled version is what most people have met.
- Sources and credit
None.
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