Tori Teriyaki v2

I haven't made Teriyaki Chicken in awhile now. Never this year, and only once back in the summer. Which is strange, because it really is an easy recipe and both Hadi and Justin love it. I don't *quite* like it as much, since its a bit too sweet and a bit too strong for me. With that in mind, I tried to make it slightly differently this time round. Here we go.

What you need:
3 boneless pieces of chicken, with skin
6 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons sugar
7 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons kicap manis (sweet soy sauce)

What you do:

1. Heat a non-stick frying pan over very high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down, until fats start to run. This will make it really nice and crisp. Fry until golden brown. Turn over and fry until golden brown. Discard fat and set aside chicken.
2. To the hot pan, add the water and scrape off any bits and juices of chicken left on the pan. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
3. Add the soy sauces and vinegar, and simmer until the vinegary smell is not quite so strong. Just stick your nose above the pan, and if the vinegar goes up you nose, you need to simmer it some more. :P Stir occasionally, until the sauce is slightly thickened.
4. Add the fried chicken pieces and simmer until they are cooked through. Transfer chicken onto a plate and cut into slices. Extra sauce can be used as a dip, or drizzled over chicken

Awwww, my picture from this is not as nice as last time's. Probably because our chicken pieces this year seem pathetically puny. Ah well.

Anyway, do be careful when simmering the chicken in the soy sauce. Back in Brunei, I once left the chicken simmering so long that the soy sauce was *very* thick and the chicken shrunken. It was also very very very strong. Not one of my best dishes, needless to say.

Also, I have to warn you that the amounts above are very approximate, since I was basically experimenting. Feel free to modify until you get what you want. See, I didn't really want it to be too sweet, so at first, I didn't add a lot of sugar. But soy sauce on its own ... is just way too salty. Flavour without any depth, if you know what I mean. So I had to adjust the amount of sugar, and then water, and then soy sauce.... Well, just keep on tasting the mixture and you should be fine, hehe.

I have to say, this isn't one of my best dishes, heh. :P The boys liked it well enough. "Strong," Hadi commented, when he tasted the sauce. It also took very little time to cook, just under half an hour. Which is very very rare. But it didn't turn out quite as I wanted it to. It tasted almost the same as the old one (though the boys barely remember that at all. Haha, I should cook it more often), and was almost as strong. I wanted to get something more like Kaizen sushi has. Sweet, but not overpoweringly so. Not too strong a sauce. And juicy tender chicken pieces (which I did manage to get right, hehe). Oh well, back to the drawing board, I guess...

Quote of the day: If I could only have one type of food with me, I would bring soy sauce. The reason being that if I have soy sauce, I can flavor a lot of things.