Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Bourbon Chicken

I was at the mall the other day and I walked through the food court. They always have people giving out the free samples and I can't turn down free food. Anywho, that particular day they were giving away bourbon chicken and it was delicious. It got me thinking, how hard can it be to make something like that? The answer, of course, is not very hard. And here is proof.

Ingredients:
  • ¼ cup of soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp. of freshly ground ginger
  • 2 tbsp. of diced onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • ¾ cup of dark brown sugar
  • ½ cup of bourbon
  • 2 tsp of Sriracha Chile sauce
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 1lb of Chicken
In a medium sized bowl, combine ¼ cup of soy sauce with a tablespoon of freshly ground ginger.

Finely dice up a couple of tablespoons of onion. As you can see I didn’t use much of the onion here. We are looking for small pieces here, so no rustic chops.

To this add ¾ cup of dark brown sugar.

Now, on to the good stuff. Pour yourself ½ cup of bourbon and add it to the mix.

Then grab a pint glass and make yourself a bourbon and ginger ale. Delicious. That should get us through the rest of our recipe!
Chop up one clove of garlic. Again, we are going with a fine dice here.

Finally add a couple grinds of black pepper and two teaspoons of Sriracha sauce (or more to taste, if you like it a little spicier). If you don’t know what Sriracha is, you need to get yourself a bottle ASAP. It will change your life. I put it on EVERYTHING. Mix up this sauce thoroughly. I used Tupperware, so I could just pop the lid on and shake it.

Take your boneless skinless chicken breasts and clean them, trim them, and cut them into medium size chunks. You can substitute any type of chicken you want; even whole quarters (just don’t cut them up).

Take the chicken and place in sauce and let marinate overnight.

Preheat your oven to 375°. Take a sheet pan and line it with foil. Then take your chicken out of the marinade and arrange it on the sheet pan, and throw it in the oven. If you accidentally leave your chicken in the marinade for 48 hours (like I did) instead of the standard 24, have no worries. It will just be that much more delicious.

Take the reserve marinade and pour into a small sauce pan to reduce by half. Use this sauce as a glaze during cooking. I applied it twice during the 40 minutes the chicken took to cook.

After forty minutes of being in the oven, the chicken should come out looking magnificent. The little brown bits are the onions, garlic, and ginger and are AMAZING with the chicken.

Serve with rice and some broccoli (not pictured). If you still have some sauce left over, you can pour a little of that over everything. As a fair warning, this recipe has been know to lead to addiction, so do not serve to weak willed individuals.

5 comments:

  1. Looks awesome... If you would like some taste-testers to give reviews, I'll offer to help.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yea, I second that. I'd be more than willing to taste test!

    ReplyDelete
  3. That looks great! I will have to try this one in place of the Szechwan Chicken that I always seem to fall back on for Chinese fare.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ok, we tried it tonight. Awesome flavor, but the chicken turned out a bit dry. What did we do wrong? We were thinking lower the temp a bit?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brett: The cook time depends on the size of the chicken and the amount of times/length it takes to baste the chicken. I should have mentioned that the cook time can vary based on that information.

    ReplyDelete