Teriyaki Chicken for a change!

 We still have plenty of leftover turkey, and the soup, and the failed cottage pie. Trying to use it up but running out of room in the fridge. I decided to thaw two chicken thighs and make a go at Teriyaki Chicken and stir fry veggies and rice.

I have been looking for Yoshida's Gourmet Sauce for a while now and it seems that it went off the market and then came back again but still not in stores convenient to me. It's available online of course and may resort to that next month. I did find the Panda Express Mandarin Teriyaki sauce which we both love so that was the start. 

I do not have all the spices necessary for an Asian rub, if that's such a thing. I used a little bit of the pork rub (recipe included) and then my 'country chicken' rub with a little allspice and fennel I think then slathered the thighs with the sauce. Here's the process:

Ingredients for Quick Teriyaki Chicken Thighs

2 chicken thighs, skin and bone in

4-6 tbl Panda Express Teriyaki Sauce (who measures this anyway?)

 Pork Dry Rub (from 'Bake it with Love' on pinterest)

2 tbl paprika (I split with smoked paprika)

1 tbl salt

1/2 tbl ground black pepper

1/2 tbl garlic powder

1/2 tbl onion powder

1/2 tsp dry mustard

1 tsp ground sage

1/4 tsp cayenne

(This is way  more than what you need so apply liberally and then store the remainder in an air tight container)

Use whatever rub/spices you want on your chicken, think of the flavor profile of an Asian sauce.

 

Spray oil

9x9 baking dish

2 servings of cooked white rice.  

Frozen Broccoli Stir Fry Vegetables

 

Prep/cooking:

 

You can put the dry rub on about an hour or so before you want to cook the chicken, put it on a plate and cover until you're ready. 

Preheat oven to 350-375

Spray the baking dish with oil (if you want to use sesame oil go for it, I don't have any)

I got the method for this from, of all things, a Bisquick box for doing oven baked chicken. That's a different post entirely.

When oven is heated, place the thighs skin side down in the dish, use a pastry/sauce brush and slather that side with the sauce and mince two cloves of garlic on the thighs and pop that in the oven for about 30 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking or half way through, cook your veggies in about a tablespoon of oil or a little more. The bag said to use a wok or the microwave...since I don't like microwaved veggies I used my trusty 12" Greenpan best I could. I didn't wait for the pan to heat up long enough so they were soggy a lot faster than they were cooked, oh well. Let the oil get to shimmer stage before putting your veggies in, you know how they do it at restaurants, the pan is REALLY hot. Since I used frozen veggies it cooled the pan down quickly which is not good. That's why you need the pan on medium high heat.

When the 30 minutes is up, pull out the chicken and (using a fork or tongs) turn the thighs over, slather with more sauce and garlic then put them back in for another 15 minutes or they get to about 170 temp.

Note: Most recipes and instructions say to cook chicken to 165, my partner prefers more thoroughly cooked chicken so I take it up to about 170 and it's still juicy with no dark pink left.  

There you have it! A good portion of the rice with veggies and some sauce on top and the chicken perfectly cooked and tasty. 

Fancy meal? Nah, but tasty and and as filling as any Asian meal would get you. We had rice left over since  I don't eat a lot of rice.  Up in the top corner of that photo you can see a wire and a corner of something, that is my digital thermometer I've had for years. It's very handy, has an L shaped probe with a long enough wire to plug into the actual thermometer so it can monitor while inserted in your meat. 

This is a newer version of of mine which is a Taylor 1470FS Digital Cooking thermometer. All the functions are identical, the only difference is the probe configuration. Can be set for time or temperature with an alarm when it reaches the designated setting. My alarm no longer works unfortunately, no biggie.

I will research the Bisquick recipe for the oven chicken because I realized that the box I got it from is different than other boxes. Darn them putting different recipes on different boxes!