This is the best teriyaki chicken we’ve ever made at home! It all starts with our authentic teriyaki sauce, which we use both as a marinade and as a sticky glaze to brush over the chicken at the end. It’s soft, flavorful, and perfectly sticky. Unbelievably delicious!
Our family lived near some amazing teriyaki restaurants, which inspired this recipe. We were inspired to recreate that authentic taste using simple, readily available ingredients, and we’re sure this recipe delivers some of the best teriyaki chicken you can make at home!
We use our favorite homemade teriyaki sauce for this dish. It’s made with five simple ingredients and keeps for weeks in the fridge. I like to serve this over rice and pickles tossed in vinegar, but our cilantro lime rice or coconut rice would also be great. For another recipe, try our honey teriyaki chicken, a little different but still delicious!
Key Ingredients
- Chicken: I love boneless, skinless chicken thighs in this recipe as they stay tender but cook quickly. And they soak up the teriyaki flavor well! Skin-on chicken thighs would also be good if you like.
- Low-Sodium Soy Sauce: I use low-sodium soy sauce as my sauce base. It may seem salty at first, but trust me. It will blend well with other ingredients to create a perfectly balanced teriyaki flavor. You can substitute with light tamari without any changes.
- Sugar: The granulated sugar balances the soy sauce and makes the teriyaki sauce thick and shiny when cooked. Feel free to experiment with brown sugar, coconut sugar, or honey, but keep in mind that this may make the sauce more flavorful. If you like honey, you might enjoy this honey teriyaki chicken!
- Sake: Don’t worry about buying expensive sake for teriyaki sauce! Use something you enjoy drinking. If you can’t find sake, mirin (sweet rice wine) also works well. You can substitute it directly or slightly reduce the sugar in the recipe.
- Rice Vinegar: This adds a little zing to the sauce. You can usually find it next to other vinegars in the grocery store. As a substitute, try white wine vinegar or plain white vinegar. Don’t worry if the sauce seems strong after adding the vinegar, the flavors will soften as it cooks.
- Fresh Ginger (optional): I like to finely grind fresh ginger so that it dissolves in the sauce. Ginger adds a bright, spicy note that complements the other flavors well.
How to Make Teriyaki Chicken
The first step to making the best homemade teriyaki chicken is making our authentic teriyaki sauce. Then, use some of it to coat the chicken and reduce the rest until thick and glossy, which you use as a glaze later. Marinate your chicken as long as possible (up to 12 hours). Dry minutes will do, but longer is always better.
Teriyaki chicken is usually cooked on the grill, giving it a smoky char. Although you can use an outdoor grill for this recipe, we wanted to make it possible to achieve delicious results indoors. So we use our oven broiler! Think of it as an upside-down grill, providing maximum heat from above.
To start, place an oven rack on top of your oven, about six inches from the burner. Place the shredded chicken on a baking sheet and place it under the broiler. Cook the chicken until well browned and starting to firm up, then flip and continue to flip until cooked through.
The whole process takes about 15 minutes. I keep it close since I make sure the chicken is not burnt or smoking too much. I also like to spoon or brush extra sauce over the chicken as it cooks, turning the sauce into a glaze.
If you don’t have chicken, fear not! An outdoor grill or a grill pan on the stovetop are great options. You can also bake the chicken, but you won’t get the same crispy look. That’s okay, though, because the taste will still be good!
Teriyaki Chicken
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PREP
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COOK
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TOTAL
This homemade teriyaki chicken recipe rivals my favorite restaurant teriyaki. Chicken is best marinated for a while, but you can go with a shorter marinating time if you’re short on time.
In our recipe, we share the ingredients to make one cake of teriyaki sauce, perfect for 1 ½ pounds of chicken. We highly recommend making a large batch of the sauce (that’s good). You can find instructions for a large batch in our teriyaki sauce recipe, which makes 2 cups and provides enough sauce for two batches of chicken.
4 Services
You will need it
1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/2 cup (120ml) light soy sauce
1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (60ml) for, see tips
2 tablespoons (30ml) rice vinegar
2 tablespoons of ground ginger, see tips
Directions
- Marinate the Chicken
1Combine soy sauce, sugar, sake, vinegar, and ginger in a small bowl. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Transfer 6 tablespoons of the sauce to a resealable plastic bag or container and add the chicken. Marinate the chicken in the refrigerator, turning once, at least 30 minutes and up to 8 hours.
2Put the remaining sauce in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and cook until the sauce has reduced slightly and is translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. If it reduces too much, add a little water to restore it to a pourable state. Cool, and store this in the refrigerator to use as a sauce for cooked chicken.
- Cook the Chicken
1Place the oven rack on top, about 6 inches from the broiler. Heat the broiler to high.
2Line a baking sheet with foil, and arrange the chicken so that the side that would have the skin is facing down. Spoon the marinade over the chicken and discard the rest. Broil for 5 minutes. Stay close to the oven to keep an eye on the chicken as it cooks.
3Turn the chicken over, then spoon or mix the juices or sauce into the pan and add back to the chicken. Doing this a few times during cooking helps add a crispy, brown crust to the chicken. Alternatively, you can save some of the sauce to use on a spoon or brush over the chicken.
4Broil for another 5 to 10 minutes or until the outside of the chicken is browned and caramelized and the inside is cooked through.
5Meanwhile, reheat the sauce from the beginning, adding a little water if it seems too thick. (This is the sauce that didn’t touch the raw chicken, not the sauce used for grilling.)
6To serve, cut the chicken into strips, place on plates, and pour over the warm sauce. Leftover sauce can be refrigerated for several weeks (I like to drizzle it over rice and vegetables.)
Tips from Adam and Joanne
- To save: Store the teriyaki chicken in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
- Leftover sauce: The reduced teriyaki sauce (not the sauce that sits with the raw chicken) can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks. I like to drizzle it over rice and vegetables.
- To cook the chicken: Depending on your oven, broil times may vary. Watch out for the chicken. Move the sheet pan down to a rack if it looks or smells like it’s burning. If the chicken cooks slower than expected, continue cooking until done.
- Ginger: We use a Microplane rasp grater, which helps the ginger to “melt” into the sauce. You can grind it fine, but you will be left with pieces of ginger in the sauce.
- Substitute Sake: We love the mild sake taste of teriyaki sauce, but if you can’t find it, there are other options. Mirin is a sweet version of sake. You can change it accordingly and leave the amount of sugar as it is or reduce the amount of sugar slightly to experience more sweetness. Dry vermouth or dry sherry can also work as a substitute. As a last resort, you can leave it completely, but remember that this will change the taste of the sauce significantly (taste the sauce before using it as you may find that without sake / mirin, you will have to prepare it with the addition of vinegar or sugar).
- The nutrition facts given below are estimates. You will probably have leftover sauce, so the actual nutritional data may be lower.
Food Per Serving
Serving Size
1/4 of the recipe (about 1 1/2 medium pumpkins)
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Calories
370
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Perfect Oils
7.1g
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Saturated Fats
1.9g
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Cholesterol
159.8mg
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Sodium
1000.9mg
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Total Carbohydrate
30.9g
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Dietary fiber
0g
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Total Sugar
26.6g
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Proteins
it’s 36g
