I’ve made this garlic & ginger marinated chicken a couple of times for my wife and kids, and it has been a hit both times. Each time I make a dish, I modify it a little, making it difficult when people want your recipe and you can’t remember exactly how you modified the most recent creation.
I know many people who continually experiment to find the absolute best combination of spices and ingredients. So below, you’ll have my most recent success for garlic & ginger marinated chicken as I remember it. Let me know if you change, modify, or adjust the recipe to make it even better! One last thing, I usually double this recipe and eat any leftovers throughout the week. It tastes just as great as it did the first time.
First, gather all of the ingredients, which really aren’t that many. The amount listed below is enough marinade for 3 pounds of chicken.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 Tbs. honey
- 4 cloves of garlic finely sliced
- 2-3 Tbs. of fresh ginger finely chopped, or you can substitute prepared minced ginger that you can buy at the grocery
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
- 1 1/2 tsp. Sriracha chili sauce
- 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
- Approx. 3 pounds of chicken. You can use a combination of any cuts that you like, such as breast with skin and rib bones and skin-on, bone-in thighs and drumsticks
That’s it for ingredients, and you probably have many of those on hand. Actually, I buy family packs of chicken when they are on sale, freeze them and pull them out when I want to make this dish.
Here are the directions for the marinade and the final baking of the chicken. Make sure you let the chicken sit at least overnight, but a full day is the best to get all of the flavors.
Directions for the marinade:
In a large bowl, whisk all ingredients (except the chicken, of course) together.
Here’s where I’ve done it a couple of different ways. You can either pour the marinade in one or two gallon-sized ziplock bags or pour the marinade in the oven-proof baking dish. Either works fine. You can easily take the bag out of the refrigerator and flip it over a few times to get the marinade all over the chicken. Or you can turn the chicken 1/2 way through the marinating time. The choice is really yours.
If you put the marinade in the actual baking dish, then what you want to do is put the chicken in and turn it over a couple of times to get marinade all over the pieces. Start by placing the skin side down on the thighs and breasts. When you flip them halfway through, the skin will be up and crisp up a little better. The first time I did this, I didn’t realize that and had soggy chicken skin.
When it’s time to bake the chicken:
When baking or grilling, I’ve always heard to let the meat stand at room temp for 15-20 minutes. Not sure what this does, but it comes out great.
Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. and bake for about 45 minutes. The skin should start turning a nice dark brown color from the baking. If it doesn’t, you can always turn on the broiler for a minute or two, but watch it closely as you don’t want it to burn.
That’s it, and your family will thank you and will probably ask for seconds!
Bon Appétit
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