The Easy Soy Sauce–Braised Chicken Dinner My Family Requests All the Time

When I was growing up in Hong Kong, my entire family—my parents, two sisters, and my six sets of aunts and uncles, along with my many cousins—would pile into my grandparent’s apartment for dinner every Sunday. Every week, without fail, my grandparents churned out a magnificent meal with enough food to feed all 33 of us. We always started dinner with a soup, such as pork broth with arrowroot, and we often ate whole steamed fish, leafy greens blanched or stir-fried with sliced ginger and large cloves of garlic, and steamed Chinese meatloaf speckled with salted duck egg. The pièce de résistance, though, was my grandmother’s soy sauce chicken, which she prepared by gently simmering a whole bird in a mixture of water, soy sauce, scallions, and fresh ginger. She’d cut up the entire chicken, arrange it neatly on a platter, and serve it with a simple ginger and scallion dipping sauce. 

Though I no longer live in Hong Kong, my grandmother still makes soy sauce chicken for me whenever I visit—and it is always just as delicious as I remember it being when I was a child. The meat is unfailingly tender and moist, and the skin, tinted brown with soy sauce, has savory depth and a hint of sweetness from rock sugar. It’s a flavor that evokes memories of home and family for me, and one I yearn for so frequently that I was inspired to create my own version of the dish. My rendition, however, is an easier weeknight-friendly dish that requires no whole chicken and no gentle poaching—and combines my love for the flavors of the classic with my fondness for crispy chicken skin.

Dry-Brine Your Chicken

While you can certainly make delicious chicken without dry-brining, it’s worth taking the time to dry-brine if you want the most flavorful and tender chicken. Dry-brining simply refers to salting and resting food (typically meat) before you cook it, and as we’ve often mentioned on Serious Eats, a dry brine is more effective than a wet one if you want juicy, crispy-skinned, well seasoned meat. As former Serious Eats senior culinary editor Sasha noted in his guide to dry-brining, wet brines can waterlog your meat, diluting its flavor and hindering browning. A dry brine, on the other hand, draws out the natural moisture from the meat, creating a “concentrated brine that, when given enough time, is naturally absorbed back into the meat before cooking,” Sasha notes. The result is a well seasoned piece of meat that’s moist and tender, with skin that crisps up easily. It’s a minimal effort step that lets time do the hard work for you, and you can dry-brine your chicken as far as three days in advance.

MSG Is Your Friend

Now that we've established that dry-brining is a good idea, the question is what to dry-brine the chicken with. Here, I reach for MSG (monosodium glutamate), an umami-rich ingredient that adds a deep savory flavor to dishes. In his marinades investigation, contributor Tim Chin found that MSG was particularly effective in seasoning meat, more so than just salt and spices alone.

Based on his findings, I decided to incorporate MSG into my dry brine, along with salt, five spice powder, dark brown sugar, and ground white pepper. Most traditional soy sauce chicken recipes don't call for five spice powder, but the ingredient—a blend of star anise, cloves, cassia bark or cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds—adds an additional layer of flavor to the dish, and provides a pleasant warmth that complements the dark brown sugar’s molasses notes.

For Tender Chicken With Crispy Skin, Sear It—Then Gently Braise

Instead of the traditional method of simmering an entire chicken on the stovetop, which requires careful babysitting to ensure it never reaches a boil—a recipe for tough, rubbery poultry—I prepare the chicken like I would a Western-style braise. I sear chicken thighs until the skin is crispy, then remove the chicken and sauté scallions, ginger, and garlic with brown sugar, five spice, star anise, and cassia bark or a cinnamon stick before deglazing with soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and water. I nestle the chicken thighs back into the sauce skin-side-up, transfer it to the oven, then let it gently cook at 300ºF (150ºC). The result is chicken with tender meat that's full of flavor and has crispy skin, tender scallions, and a deeply savory sauce that's perfect alongside rice. 

This may not be my grandmother’s chicken, but it’s a close enough rendition that’s delicious and easy enough for me to whip up on a weeknight without requiring me to babysit my chicken on the stove. I serve it with stir-fried bok choy to round out the meal, though the dish really doesn't need anything more than bowls of rice on the side. My husband and child love this meal as much as I do, and request it frequently. I may not be sitting at my grandparent's table every Sunday night, but it certainly feels like it when I make these soy sauce–braised chicken thighs for my own family. And who knows? It might even become our own Sunday night tradition.

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