The Midwest Buddhist Temple in Chicago throws an annual Japanese food and culture event called the Ginza Festival. One thing people flock to the Ginza Festival each year is their famous teriyaki chicken, unfortunately I was unable to partake this year due to some dental surgery a few days before the event so I decided I would make some myself once I was cleared to resume eating a normal diet.
The Midwest Buddhist Temple prints a recipe booklet for each year's festival and it always includes their teriyaki chicken recipe, originating from Chef Tony Naito it can be found online on local news websites and blogs. Basically the recipe calls for marinating the chicken in teriyaki sauce overnight, then putting everything in a pan and simmering the chicken in the sauce covered for about 20 minutes. Finally your finish the chicken on a charcoal grill while basting with the reduced sauce. I decided to utilize sous vide to ensure the chicken would come out moist and juicy.
First step is making the sauce, the ingredients are...
3/4 cup soy sauce (I used low sodium)
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup sweet red wine
1" ginger, grated
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
The original recipe uses Mogen David Concord Grape wine but I didn't find any at the grocery store so I went with a merlot.
Put all ingredients in a saucepan and heat until the sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool to room temp.
At the festival they use 1/2 chickens, but since bone-in, skin on chicken thighs were on sale at the local supermarket I opted for those. The chicken and cool teriyaki sauce were vacuum sealed together using my VacMaster VP215 Chamber Vacuum Sealer. Chamber sealers have an advantage here because they make it much easier to seal liquids in the bags, if using a suction sealer like a FoodSaver you could freeze the marinade in ice cube trays and just seal the frozen cubes up with the chicken. Once the marinade cubes thaw you would just need to massage the bags to make sure the marinade is well distributed. The bags of chicken were then put in the refrigerator to marinate over night. The next morning I filled up a 12 quart Cambro with water, attached my Joule immersion circulator and opened up the Joule app to set the bath temperature to 163°f. Once the bath was up to temp the bags of chicken went in and the timer was set for 3 hours. When the time was up the bags were removed from the bath and chilled down before going in the refrigerator until later in the day.
It was a dark and stormy day, so I had to finish the chicken indoors instead of on the Weber as I had intended. The chicken thighs were removed from the bags and patted dry. I drained the purge in to a saucepan and put it over medium heat to start reducing. This stuff is pretty high in sugar so it'll boil over if you don't keep an eye on it. A separate non-stick skillet was put over medium high heat and filmed with a little oil. Once the oil was shimmering and just about to start smoking the chicken thighs were put in skin side down to brown. They only took about 2 minutes for the skin to get browned and crispy, they were then flipped over and the now reduced marinade was added to the skillet to get everything warmed through and for it to reduce a bit more. Once warmed through the chicken was turned over in the sauce and then put skin side up on a rack over a sheet pan, the rack was then put in a 400°f oven for a few minutes for the teriyaki glaze to set.
The chicken turned out pretty well. I would have preferred to finish it over charcoal or even in the pellet grill to get some wood flavor on it but the weather gods had other ideas.
I used low sodium soy sauce this time by request, but I think it turns out better with the regular stuff. When I made this chicken previously it turned out WAY too salty, but I think that was because I used a bottle of soy sauce that had been in the back of the pantry for a long time and had concentrated quite a bit due to evaporation. Next time I'll just buy a new bottle of good soy sauce.
Simmering the sous vide cooked chicken in the reduced purge from the bags helped heat everything through quicker and resulted in a nice, sticky glaze on the chicken thighs once they were put in the oven to set. I used a lower temperature for the water bath than I had seen suggested on line (163°f vs. 167°f) so I wasn't too worried about overcooking the meat during the finishing process. I probably could have gone with a bit of a higher temp in the water bath to get a more traditional texture in the finished product but the lower temp/longer cook helps ensure the chicken stays nice and juicy.
it looks so yummy
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