Why Every Cook Should Master Chicken Teriyaki

let's be honest chicken teriyaki is just good it nails it on so many different levels i've been eating it my whole life and it still holds up today but i'm here to tell you that you can make a chicken teriyaki at home better than any version you've ever had at a restaurant and that is a guarantee but it's gonna take some new techniques it's gonna take some skills and that's what this video is all about we're diving deep into the world of teriyaki so you can master this dish and add it to your arsenal of meals that you can whip up for dinner throughout the week now i grew up on teriyaki sauce i basically drank this stuff out of the bottle it was so damn good but it wasn't until recently that i actually learned how to make a traditional teriyaki and it's quite simple there's three base ingredients to every teriyaki sauce you've got a sake which is a rice wine you have a mirin which is also a rice wine with a lower alcohol content that's also sweetened and finally soy sauce these three ingredients you mix together in equal parts you cook them down boom you have a teriyaki sauce that's the simple version but you can also add extra flavor for me i like extra flavor in my sauce so i'm gonna be adding some aromatics i've got two cloves of garlic that i'll slice up and a knob of ginger that i'll peel and cut into slices and once you have all of that sliced up then you can finely mince your ginger and garlic together and the goal is to get this super fine because i'm not pureeing this sauce these little pieces will be in the final sauce so what we're going to do first for this chicken teriyaki is get a pan on a little sauce pot i'll put it on a medium-low heat and then i'm going to dump in a little bit of oil and this step is optional but if you really want to flavor blast your sauce it's definitely worth it so i've got my ginger and my garlic in there and what i'm doing is blooming these aromatics basically waking them up and also infusing them in that oil because oil is the best carrier of aromatic flavor so just keep an eye on this make sure you're stirring it because you don't want that garlic to burn this is a gentle cooking process so this has been cooking for about three minutes smelling extremely fragrant i'm gonna go in with the liquid ingredients in equal parts it doesn't really matter what you're measuring in i'm just using a one cup measuring cup it's a dry measuring cup but it doesn't really matter as long as this is equal parts you're good to go one cup of the mirin that's your sweetness oh just fit that in there and then one cup of the soy and now i'll turn the heat up just a bit and let that alcohol cook off and also let those flavors really intensify that's the bubble you're looking for just a gentle simmer i'm just gonna give this a quick taste to see where we're at getting there for sure need to cook up that alcohol just a little bit more and a lot of recipes will tell you to add extra sugar which will help thicken the sauce and also sweeten it teriyaki sauce is a very sweet sauce but i would taste it first because mirin already has a lot of sugar in there and for me that is plenty sweet so what i'm gonna do to thicken this since i don't have that extra sugar is use a cornstarch slurry which is just a two to one ratio of corn starch i'm using two tablespoons of cornstarch to four tablespoons of water and once my sauce has reduced by about a third i'm gonna slowly drizzle in that slurry to really thicken up this [Music] sauce look how luscious that sauce is and so simple there is one more ingredient totally optional but the teriyaki sauce that i loved growing up there was this one brand it had so many sesame seeds in there which was just great for texture it's a nice little crunch and also flavor of course and also look at that it just looks really [Music] fun the next reason you should be mastering chicken teriyaki is that it's such a well-balanced dish and when it comes to really building up our arsenal of meals that we can go to throughout the week we want those dishes that are nice and balanced and once you have that teriyaki sauce all we have to do is cook a protein cook a veggie serve it over rice boom you've got a beautiful dinner and because it's chicken teriyaki well we need a cut of chicken i'm going with chicken thigh which is by far my favorite cut for this my chicken thighs are bone in and skin on and i would definitely recommend buying chicken thighs with this skin on and you'll see why in a second but if you can only find the boneless skinless chicken thigh that's totally fine so i'm going to keep the skin on but i'm going to remove the bone which i won't need when i'm pan frying these chicken thighs and i'm also just going to clean up any extra skin if there's any extra fat you can remove that and my favorite technique for these chicken thighs is i'll salt and pepper them on both sides and i'll pop those in the fridge overnight and you'll see when the chicken thigh comes out the next day that skin will have transformed it will look a little more leathery a little more dried out and that's what we want that's how we're going to get maximum crispiness on that skin and of course if you don't have time you can just skip this step and salt your chicken 30 minutes beforehand and you'll still be good to go so i'm gonna put the chicken thigh skin down in a completely cold pan and turn the heat on to a medium heat and slowly let that pan come up to temperature and start rendering out the fat in the chicken skin and while that's happening i'm going to cut up my veggies i've got some broccolini here a family member of broccoli but you can use whatever veggie you want we're going to be frying these veggies in the fat that is rendered off the chicken skin so you can see i'm just on a medium heat and the fat after about four or five minutes is really starting to render out starting to get crispy definitely not there yet but there's still plenty of more fat to render out of that skin over the next two minutes it's a bit flattery over here but look how much fat is coming off just that skin [Music] i went to get a new camera angle and the heat was just a little too high so you can see it's slightly darker than i want i prefer something just nice and golden like this but you get the idea by letting that skin dry out we pretty much have a glass coating when the chicken thigh is crispy on both sides and it's cooked through you can remove that from the pan and now we have all this beautiful fat and that's when we'll toss in our veggies and just let those brown on one side and get nice and crispy and then you can turn them over add a little bit of salt and just cook those to your desired doneness [Music] now another reason to master teriyaki is once you've really nailed down this sauce we're talking versatility in a bottle right here it doesn't have to be chicken it doesn't have to be broccoli you can use any protein any veggie i've tried this dish with so many different options whether it be a vegetarian option or a piece of salmon and it's all good it's just a very versatile sauce and one vegetarian option that i really love if i feel like my meat intake is a little too heavy is tofu and i'll use the same exact process that i did on the chicken i'll make sure my tofu is nice and dry salt and pepper it on both sides and i'll throw that in the fridge overnight and again if you don't have time it can go right into a pan of oil and the key here is to get it really nice and crispy make sure you're using enough fat or enough oil to get a nice crust on your tofu so i fried my tofu for about four to five minutes on each side and my veggie of choice was the only thing i had in the studio i had an onion in the pantry and a red pepper in the fridge so i sliced those up into similar sized pieces threw those into the oil and just gave them a nice stir-fry until they were nice and brown i want to take a quick minute to tell you about the sponsor of today's video which is nissan a kitchen tool company offering premium kitchen tools at a very affordable price because they're cutting out the middle man and my new favorite me sand product is definitely their carbon steel pan i've been obsessed with this pan it's pretty much taken over as my pan of choice in the kitchen because it's just so versatile because of the material it's naturally nonstick with a very easy seasoning process i really like that natural patina that develops on the carbon steel from just using it over time what's great about it is that it has similar properties as cast iron but it's not nearly as heavy it's about 42 percent lighter than cast iron so it's really easy to maneuver but you can still develop a lot of heat and retain heat in this pan so you can get a beautiful crust or a beautiful sear on whatever you're cooking so if you're interested in this carbon steel pan or any of the other awesome nissan products i have a ton of them in this kitchen make sure you click the link below in the description and use codeword prohome cooks for 20 off your first order now back to some teriyaki and finally the last element to really bring this dish together is some fluffy white rice and another great reason to master this dish is to get better at making rice at home which for me even is a constant battle of just tinkering and adjusting my methods believe it or not rice can be very difficult to make at home especially if you don't have a rice cooker and i'm using just a pot for this rice so i'm going to show you the method that i use and it starts off by washing your rice so i've measured out one cup full of rice and keep that cup around because you'll need it to measure out your water and i'm going to first wash this rice to get all that excess starch off the exterior of your rice and it's going to take a few times until that liquid starts to run clear now most rice packages will recommend a two parts water to one part rice ratio but they're generally not telling you to wash your rice because we washed our rice we now have added water into our rice so because we have that initial water i'm just gonna go with a one to one ratio so i'm gonna start my rice on a high heat just until it comes up to a gentle simmer and you start seeing those bubbles right when you see those bubbles you're gonna put a cap on your pot turn your heat down to the lowest it goes just a really gentle flame and set your timer for 15 minutes and after 15 minutes your water should be completely absorbed in your rice but what i like to do is let that rice steam in there so keep that lid on and just let it steam until you're ready to serve your dish and that extra heat is going to bring that rice up to the place it needs to be that perfect tenderness so as far as plating this dish goes you've got options you can cook the sauce into the chicken you could add some sauce to the veggies and stir-fry them up in the pan or of course you could just drizzle the sauce over i'm gonna try something new today that just kind of popped into my head i'm gonna take the crispy chicken and just dunk it just give it a dunk now that chicken is fully glazed so i can just slice that up and serve it with the rice and veggies so the last reason you should definitely master this dish is that teriyaki is a crowd pleaser for everyone i don't think i've met anyone who has not liked this dish when i was a kid and i went to a japanese restaurant before i was eating sushi i was scared of sushi at the time i was ordering chicken teriyaki because you've got the sweetness you've got the saltiness pretty undeniable as a kid yet as an adult it still holds up it's still incredible especially when you really nail down those traditional ingredients for the sauce it's just a crowd pleaser all around so hopefully i inspired you in some way to make this dish and if you do make it make sure you tag me on instagram at life by mike g so i can see your lovely creations you

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 1,548,531

Rating: 4.9521608 out of 5

Keywords: brothers, green, mike, michael, josh, joshua, greenfield, cooking, how to, recipe, video, how to cook, how to make, cooking video, enzyme tire spunk

Id: t-Hj2pILMz4

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021