This Sous Vide Soy Sauce Chicken is one of the best versions of soy sauce chicken I've ever had. I love modernizing traditional recipes to make them better, and sous vide makes this recipe super juicy, tender, and flavorful.
My wife's family is Cantonese and we always order soy sauce chicken whenever we eat at a Chinese restaurant. Recently at a Chinese dinner, my wife's aunt asked if I knew how to make it. I told her yes, and that I would make it for them next time.
Fast forward a few weeks, and we had the family over for Father's Day. I wanted to elevate the traditional recipe, so I decided to cook the chicken sous vide. It turned out amazing! First, I marinated the chicken overnight, and then I cooked it at 150°F for about 4 hours. The meat was juicy and tender and had the flavor that everyone loves. Even my wife's picky grandpa couldn't stop eating it.
Important ingredients
Chicken
I used a whole chicken for authenticity's sake, but you can use whatever chicken you have on hand, for example, legs, drumsticks, breasts, or wings. I highly recommend using skin-on if possible, because it absorbs the flavor of the marinade really well.
Chinese rose wine
This is a type of Chinese wine flavored with rose petals. It comes in two varieties, a cooking version and a drinkable version. I'm using the cooking version which has around 10% alcohol and is salted. I got mine at my local Chinese grocery store:
Aromatics
The traditional recipe calls for many different spices but you don't need to include all of them. I used star anise, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, dried tangerine peels, and dried licorice. I would say star anise, cinnamon, and cloves are the most important ingredients, and the others can be optional.
Dark soy sauce
One of the main characteristics of soy sauce chicken is its brown-colored skin. To give it this color, you want to use dark soy sauce. Dark soy sauce is not as salty as regular soy sauce, but it has a very deep dark color.
Important Steps
Spatchcock the chicken
You cannot sous vide a whole chicken directly because it has a giant air pocket in the stomach. You need to spatchcock it first so that the entire chicken is in contact with the water bath. To do so, just cut out the backbone and then press down on the chicken to flatten it.
Marinating
This is optional, but I like to marinate the chicken for at least 4 hours before sous-viding it. This will make the meat much more juicy and flavorful because it gives time for the seasonings to penetrate the meat.
Sous vide
My favorite temperature for sous-viding chicken is 150°F. I find it is a good balance for keeping the breast meat juicy while also melting the intramuscular fat in the dark meat.
In terms of cooking time, you need to cook the meat for at least one hour per 1 inch of thickness. For a standard-sized chicken, this is about 2 hours. However, I prefer cooking it for 4 hours because it makes the meat slightly more tender.
Sous Vide Soy Sauce Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 (2-inch) piece ginger (smashed)
- 4 star anise
- 4 cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 bay leaves (optional)
- 2 pieces dried tangerine peel (optional)
- 2 pieces dried licorice root (optional)
- 1 cup Chinese rose wine (or Shaoxing wine)
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ¾ cup dark soy sauce
- 1 ½ cups brown sugar (firmly packed)
- 1 whole chicken (about 3-4 pounds)
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients (except the chicken) to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to the lowest setting and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Let the mixture cool for 15 minutes then strain the mixture through a fine-meshed sieve. Set aside.
- Spatchcock the chicken by cutting out the backbone with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. Remove any loose skin and place the chicken in a large zipper-lock bag (I prefer this over vacuum-sealable bags because the vacuum sealer always sucks out some of the marinade).
- Pour the marinade into the bag. Seal the bag but leave a small hole in one corner. Slowly submerge the bag in a tub of water to push out the air, then seal the hole.
- At this point, you can start sous-viding it, but I like to marinate it for at least 4 hours. If you don't have time, it's not required and you can go directly to the next step.
- Preheat your water bath to 150°F. Cook sous vide for at least 2 hours and up to 6 hours. I think it tastes best at the 4-hour mark. The meat is very tender.
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