In the Kitchen: Shoyu Chicken
Every now and then, I crave okazuya (Japanese delicatessen) food. Especially shoyu chicken and shoyu long rice. A couple of years ago, by accident, I concocted this recipe that satisfies both cravings, in one dish.
Here’s how it happened. We were moving into a new apartment, with the help of some of my brother’s college friends. To thank them for their help, I promised to make them a homemade, “local style” dinner. One of the requests was shoyu chicken.
So I made the shoyu chicken, but there was way too much liquid in the pot once the chicken was done. Not wanting to waste any of the sauce, I threw some long rice noodles to the pot to soak up the excess liquid. What initially was a MacGyver moment for me, ended up being quite a hit. I’m often asked for the recipe to this dish, even if it’s fairly simple to figure out by taste.
So, by special request… here’s my recipe for
Shoyu Chicken:
Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup Kikoman soy sauce
3/4 cup sake
1 cup water
3 pounds chicken thighs
2 thumb sized pieces ginger root, sliced about a quarter inch thick
2 stalks green onions, sliced (optional)
1 package long rice (optional)
Directions:
In a medium sized pot, mix sugar, soy sauce, sake and water. To this mixture, add the ginger root.
Add chicken thighs to the pot. Sauce should cover the chicken thighs.
Bring pot to a rolling boil, then cover pot and decrease heat to medium high heat.
Cook for 45 minutes.
Check on pot occasionally, turning chicken over every so often to disperse flavor to both sides of chicken and to keep chicken moist.
Optional:
Turn off heat, then mix in green onions to sauce.
Do not “cook” the green onions with the chicken as the green onions will eventually turn black if kept too long in the sauce.
Serve. (or go to next “Optional” step…)
Optional:
The sauce will eventually increase as water and oil is drawn out from the chicken.
To “soak up” some of the sauce, place 1 package of long rice in the sauce and cook, uncovered, until noodles are done (approximately 5 minutes).
There should still be enough sauce for your rice = ).
I made this for dinner tonight. Here’s how it turned out:
May 20th, 2008 at 1:11 am
OMG, I want some right now. I’m having midnight cravings and the shoyu chicken would do nicely! LOL. Actually, I’m going to have Moi make this soon . . .
May 20th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Yum! My sister-in-law, Connie was talking about your blog…in her blog. This Shoyu chicken looks sooo good, even at almost 8am!
How many people do you think your recipe would feed?
May 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Hi Lauren!
Thanks for stopping by. This recipe should be able to feed about 4 people, I think, depending on their appetite (and how big the chicken pieces are)… Or 2 people, with leftovers = ). I find that this is better the next day, as all the flavors sort of “settle” overnight. One thing, though, if you’re packing some away for leftovers, don’t pour all of the leftover sauce with the leftover chicken, it’ll end up being too salty. Instead, save most of the leftover sauce in a separate container and reheat when you’re ready to eat.