Ginza Festival Teriyaki Chicken, Sous Vide

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.

Sous Vide Nashville Hot Chicken

Nashville Hot Chicken is starting to become more and more available outside Tennessee, basically a highly spiced piece of fried chicken that after cooking is coated with a paste of cooking grease and hot spices.  While I've never had the chance to try it at the source we now have several places in Chicago that serve the dish.  Not too long ago I can across this article at Kentucky.com and decided I'd try to do my take on this regional specialty.

I made a spice blend based on the one in the article with a few minor changes based on what I had in the cabinet.  The blend I came up with is:

3 TB cayenne pepper
2 ts dry mustard
1 1/2 ts table salt
1 ts sugar
1 ts chipotle powder (didn't have any hot or smoked paprika)
1 ts black pepper
3/4 ts garlic powder
1/2 ts celery salt (mainly because I have a crap-ton of celery salt)

Because I had them I decided to use boneless/skinless chicken breasts.  I generously dusted all sides of the chicken with the spice mix before putting them in a gallon size Ziploc bag and letting them sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  The next day I filled a 12 quart cambro up to the 10 liter mark, attached the WiFi Nomiku and set the target temp to 150°f.  Once the bath was heated I put in the bag containing the seasoned chicken breasts and let them soak for 90 minutes.  When done the bag was removed from the bath and put in the refrigerator to chill.

Now it was time to play with the Paragon Induction Cooktop.  I figured I'd make some fries first to go with the chicken, I cut a russet potato in to batons and let them soak in cold water for about 10 minutes before rinsing several times.  About 6 cups of grease (corn oil with a little bacon grease) was put in a 3 quart sauce pan and the wireless probe put in place.  The potatoes were drained, patted dry with paper towels and put in the cold oil.  Finally the Paragon temperature was set to 370°f, rapid precision mode selected and the unit turned on.  Once the oil temp got over 212°f I switched to gentle precision mode and made sure to shake the pan every two minutes or so to keep things from sticking together.  This method worked pretty well, however as you can see in the picture there were a few fries in contact with the bottom of the pot initially which caused to brown a little before the others.  I may look in to using a small, round cooling rack next time to keep them from coming into contact with the bottom next time.

Now on to the chicken.  A two stage breading station was setup with plain flour on one side and a mixture of buttermilk, the spice mix and some of the purge from the cooking bag in the other.  One of the cold chicken breasts was first dredged in the flour, then coated with the buttermilk mix and then back into the flour.  Once everything was nice and coated it was allowed to rest on a piece of parchment paper while the oil got back up to temperature (which doesn't take too long for that small quantity of oil in rapid precision mode).  The chicken was carefully lowered in to the oil and cooked until the crust turned a nice golden-brown color.  Since the meat was pre-cooked there was no reason to worry about the internal temperature reaching 165°f, it just needs to be heated through.  I turned the chicken breast once, which can be a little tricky in such a small saucepan so care is needed to prevent being splashed with boiling hot oil.  Once done a tablespoon of the hot oil was added to about the same measure of the spice mix and used to coat the chicken breast.

The chicken had great flavor and the sous vide fried chicken method ensures that the meat remains tender and juicy.  I could have done with a little more heat, next time I'm at the store I'll need to pick up some hot paprika to try and dial it up a bit.  All in all a successful first attempt, but still room to tweak the recipe.  I'll have to stop by Gus's Fried Chicken for some authentic inspiration!

Whole roast chicken sous vide.

From time to time I like a good roast chicken for dinner, so when I was walking through my local supermarket recently and saw they had a sale on whole chickens I picked one up.  This was kind of an impulse buy so I really didn't have a plan and I was looking at a pretty bust week ahead at work so I needed to think of a way to get most of the work done ahead of time so I could quickly finish the cooking when I got home.  Sous vide turned out to be the answer.

The first part of the cooking was done on a day I wasn't working.  Everything in the cavity was removed and the chicken was rinsed and patted dry.  I mixed together some salt, pepper and poultry seasoning in a small bowl and generously seasoned the cavity and outside of the bird, then stuffed the cavity with some Land O' Lakes garlic herb butter, rosemary and quarters of onion.  The whole chicken was slid in to a Foodsaver bag I had cut earlier and vacuum sealed (a bird bigger than 4 pounds would have probably been too big for the bag).  Prior to prepping the chicken I had set up my Nomiku on a 12 quart Cambro with the bath filled up to the low mark on the circulator and set the temp to 62.8C (145F).  Adding the bagged bird to the bath brought the water level almost up to the high level mark on the circulator, I put on the lid and let the chicken soak for 6 hours while I went about my day.  After the soak I let the chicken cool down for 20 minutes at room temperature, then chilled down completely in an ice bath before throwing in the refrigerator.

A few days later it was time to finish the chicken.  When I made it home I placed the bagged chicken back in to the bath with the temperature set to 60C so it could start to re-therm while the oven heated up to 475F (convection).  I placed a bunch of asparagus in the bottom of a casserole dish with a cooling rack on top.  The chicken was removed from the bag and placed breast side down on a piece of parchment paper on top of the rack, all the juices from the bag were poured over the asparagus.  As you can see below, it was a little on the pale side. 

 The bird was patted dry with paper towels and placed in the oven for 10 minutes for the first side to brown, I also did a few minutes under the broiler to speed things up.  After turning the bird breast side up it was returned to the oven for another 10 minutes followed by a little time under the broiler.  Here is the final result...

All of the white meat was perfectly cooked and wonderfully juicy.  The dark meat good but a little on the red side for some tastes.  Next time I may break the chicken down and cook the white and dark meats separately at different temperatures.  The asparagus cooked in the bag juices under the chicken was amazing.

My first Nomiku meal!

My first Nomiku centric meal.  The chicken breast, carrots and potatoes were all cooked with my new Nomiku.  For the chicken breast, I made a marinade with equal parts ponzu, soy sauce and fish sauce.  To that I added some powdered ginger, granulated garlic and seasoned pepper.  The carrots were peeled and bagged with some dill weed, lemon zest salt and butter.  For the potatoes I just cleaned them and bagged with crushed garlic, butter, salt and pepper.  I pierced each potato with a fork to allow the flavor to penetrate.  The carrots and potatoes were cooked at 85°C for 45 minutes, then allowed to cool for about 10 minutes before being put in an ice bath to chill.  Later in the day, the chicken breasts were cooked at 65.6°C for 45 minutes.  After the chicken was removed to cool the carrots and potatoes were put in the bath to retherm.  To serve the carrots and potatoes were put on a foil lined baking sheet and roasted in a hot oven to dry out a little.  The chicken breast was put over a screaming hot charcoal fire to sear.  Also served was some freshly baked bread (100% flour, 66% water, 2% honey, 0.75% active dry yeast, 2% salt) and grilled portobello mushroom caps that were doused with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and cooked on the grill.  Since it is fall I grabbed some oak leaves from the patio and threw them on the fire to smoke the mushrooms.  Very nice meal!