This is the best teriyaki chicken we’ve ever made at home! It all starts with our authentic teriyaki sauce, which doubles as a marinade and sticky glaze for brushing over the chicken towards the end. It’s tender, flavorful, and unbelievably delicious!
Our family used to live next door to some truly amazing teriyaki restaurants, which has inspired this recipe. We were inspired to recreate that authentic flavor using simple, readily available ingredients, and we’re confident that this easy recipe delivers some of the best teriyaki chicken you’ll ever make at home!
We use our favorite homemade teriyaki sauce for this dish. It’s made with five simple ingredients and lasts weeks in the fridge. I love serving this over rice with cucumbers tossed in vinegar, but our cilantro lime rice or coconut rice would also be excellent. For another one of our favorite chicken recipes, try our honey teriyaki chicken, which is a slightly different spin but still delicious!
Key Ingredients
- Chicken: I love boneless, skinless chicken thighs for this recipe since they stay tender but cook quickly. They also soak up the teriyaki flavor beautifully! Skin-on chicken thighs would also be great if you prefer. Chicken breasts are also fine, but as with many of our chicken recipes, I love thighs!
- Low-Sodium Soy Sauce: I use low-sodium soy sauce as the base of my sauce. It might seem salty at first, but trust me. It’ll blend beautifully with the other ingredients to create a perfectly balanced teriyaki flavor. You can substitute with light tamari with no changes.
- Sugar: Granulated sugar balances the soy sauce and makes the teriyaki sauce thick and glossy when cooked. Feel free to experiment with brown sugar, coconut sugar, or even honey, but remember that these might make the sauce taste sweeter. If you love honey, you may enjoy this honey teriyaki chicken!
- Sake: Don’t stress about buying expensive sake for teriyaki sauce! Use something you’d enjoy drinking. If you can’t find sake, mirin (a sweeter rice wine) works well too. You can swap it in directly or slightly reduce the sugar in the recipe.
- Rice Vinegar: This adds a little zing to the sauce. You can usually find it near other vinegars at the grocery store. For substitutes, try white wine vinegar or plain white vinegar. Don’t worry if the sauce seems a bit strong after adding the vinegar, the flavors will mellow as it cooks.
- Fresh Ginger (optional): I like to grate fresh ginger finely so it melts into the sauce. Ginger adds a bright, spicy note that complements the other flavors beautifully.
How to Make Teriyaki Chicken
This recipe is easy! The first step to making the best chicken teriyaki is making our authentic teriyaki sauce. Then, use some of it to marinate the chicken and reduce the rest until it is thick and glossy, which you spoon over as a glaze later. Marinate your chicken for as long as possible (up to 12 hours). Thirsty minutes will do, but longer is always better.
Teriyaki chicken is often cooked on a grill, imparting a smoky char. While you could certainly use an outdoor grill for this recipe, we wanted to make it possible to achieve delicious results indoors. So we use our oven’s broiler! Think of it as an upside-down grill, providing intense heat from above.
To start, position an oven rack towards the top of your oven, about six inches from the burner. Put the marinated chicken on a baking sheet and place it under the broiler. Broil the chicken until it is beautifully browned and starting to firm up, then flip and continue broiling until cooked through.
This whole process takes about 15 minutes. I stay close since to make sure the chicken isn’t burning or smoking too much. I also like spooning or brushing extra sauce over the chicken as it cooks, transforming the sauce into a shiny glaze.
If you don’t have a broiler, fear not! An outdoor grill or a grill pan on the stovetop are excellent alternatives. You can also bake the chicken, but you won’t get the same glazed look. That’s okay, though, because the flavor will still be incredible!
Easy Teriyaki Chicken
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
This easy homemade teriyaki chicken recipe rivals my favorite teriyaki restaurants. The chicken is best when marinated for a while, but you can get away with a shorter marinating period if you’re short on time.
In our recipe, we’ve shared the ingredients to make one batch of teriyaki sauce, perfect for 1 ½ pounds of chicken. We highly recommend making a larger batch of sauce (it’s that good). You can find the instructions for a larger batch in our teriyaki sauce recipe, which makes 2 cups and provides enough sauce for two batches of chicken.
You Will Need
1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/2 cup (120ml) light soy sauce
1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (60ml) sake, see tips
2 tablespoons (30ml) rice vinegar
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger, see tips
Directions
- Marinate the Chicken
1Combine the soy sauce, sugar, sake, vinegar, and ginger in a small bowl. Stir until the sugar completely dissolves. 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, for at least 30 minutes and up to 12 hours.
2Add the remaining sauce to a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring it to a simmer and cook until the sauce reduces slightly and looks shiny, 3 to 5 minutes. If it reduces too much, add a bit of water to bring it back to a pourable consistency. Cool, and then save this in the refrigerator to use as a sauce for the cooked chicken.
- Cook the Chicken
1Position an oven rack towards the top, about 6 inches from the broiler. Heat the broiler to high.
2Line a baking sheet with foil, then arrange the chicken so that the side that would have had skin faces down. Spoon a bit of the marinade with the chicken on top and discard the rest. Broil for 5 minutes. Stay close to the oven to keep an eye on the chicken as it cooks.
3Flip the chicken, and then spoon or brush juices or sauce pooling on the pan back onto the chicken. Doing this a few times during cooking helps to add a shiny, browned crust to the chicken. Alternatively, you can steal some of the sauce saved for serving to spoon or brush over the chicken.
4Broil another 5 to 10 minutes or until the outside of the chicken looks brown and caramelized and the inside is cooked through.
5Meanwhile, reheat the sauce from earlier, adding a bit of water if it seems too thick. (This is the sauce that has not touched raw chicken, not the sauce used to marinate.)
6To serve, slice the chicken into strips, place onto plates, and drizzle with the warmed sauce. Leftover sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks (I like drizzling it over rice and vegetables.)
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Storing: Keep chicken teriyaki in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
- Leftover sauce: The reduced teriyaki sauce (not sauce that’s sat with raw chicken) can be stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks. I like drizzling it over rice and vegetables.
- Broiling the chicken: Depending on your oven, broil times may differ. Keep an eye on the chicken. Move the sheet pan down a rack if it looks like or smells like it is burning. If the chicken is cooking slower than expected, continue to broil until cooked through.
- Ginger: We use a Microplane rasp grater, which helps the ginger to “melt” into the sauce. You can finely mince, but you will be left with bits of ginger in the sauce.
- Substitute for Sake: We love the delicate flavor of sake for teriyaki sauce, but if you cannot find it, there are some alternatives. Mirin is a sweeter version of sake. You can either swap it for the sake and leave the sugar amount as is or pull back on the amount of sugar slightly to accommodate the extra sweetness. Dry vermouth or dry sherry can also work as a substitute. As a last resort, you can leave it out altogether, but keep in mind that this will change the taste of the sauce dramatically (taste the sauce before using it as you may find that without sake/mirin, you will need to adjust with additional vinegar or sugar).
- Gluten-free: Check that all ingredients are certified gluten-free before using. Specifically, watch out for the soy sauce. You should look for gluten-free tamari.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. You will likely have leftover sauce, so the actual nutritional data may be less.
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I had never made chicken teriyaki before. So this recipe was good for trying out for the first time.It is so easy and tasty. I would recommend.
Can this recipe be made in a crock pot or slow cooker?
The sauce can be used when cooking chicken in a crock pot or slow cooker but we haven’t tried making this recipe in either.
This looks fabulous! All your recipes that I have made are the best. Plus, you have a laid-back tone to your posts that I really appreciate. Can’t wait to make Teriyaki Chicken! Thank you and Merry Christmas!