Easy and Delicious Ponzu Chicken Recipe

I am Yuzo and today on Stachy I'm going to show you how to make crispy and zesty ponzu chicken. Let's get straight to it. First take a boneless chicken thigh with the skin on, turn it over and use scissors to cut the thicker parts. The purpose here is to flatten the thick parts out and make it the same thickness all over. If you cut horizontally, kind of at an angle, you can pull out the meat and lay it flat. You can also use the scissors to cut out the tendons and connective tissues if you like. I generally use one chicken thigh per person for this dish. Once that's done, flip it over and pull the skin over the edges. Then flip it back over and cover the meat with plastic wrap. Now flip it over once more and place it in a container. We're leaving the skin exposed so that it dries out a bit. This will help make it extra crispy. Place this in the fridge for about 30 minutes and make sure it's not touching any other items in your fridge. We want to avoid cross-contamination. Okay so it's been 30 minutes so I'm going to add a generous amount of oil to a cold pan. About one tablespoon per chicken thigh. Place the chicken thighs with the skin side down. You can spread oil around by moving it around the pan like this. Sprinkle the top with salt and pepper then cover with foil. Next we want to weigh the chicken down. I'm using a large pot filled halfway with water. You can use whatever you like, just make sure it's stable and feedproof. Preferably a heavy pot or pan. Set heat medium low and hang out near the stove to listen for when it starts to sizzle. Once you can hear it, set a timer for 10 minutes. Okay it's been 10 minutes so let's remove the weight and the foil. As you can see the fat has rendered out of the chicken skin and the pan is filled with fat and juices. Use these to baste the top of the meat for two to three minutes. Finally let's flip over and fry on the other side for one to two minutes. As you can see it's beautifully golden and crispy on top. After a couple minutes transfer it to a wire rack and let it rest until it's time to serve. Now I don't want to waste this delicious chicken fat so I'm going to use it to fry some vegetables to serve with my chicken. Obviously this is a bit much so pour the excess into a heatproof container and save it for another dish such as fried rice. I'm serving my ponzu chicken with bok choy and king oyster mushrooms but you can use any of your favorite vegetables. Fry them until softened to your liking and then take them off the heat. Finally we're going to make the ponzu sauce. Take a small saucepan and add 90 milliliters of ponzu, two tablespoons of mirin, two tablespoons of sake, two teaspoons of sugar and one teaspoon of honey. Let it boil for one to two minutes to burn off the alcohol in sake and mirin. Ponzu is soy sauce based sauce infused with dashi ingredients and citrus like lemon or yuzu. If you're interested in making your own ponzu I have a recipe on my blog. While you wait for it to boil add one teaspoon of potato starch to one tablespoon of cold water and mix them together to make a slurry. Pour this into the ponzu sauce and mix over the heat until it's thick and glossy. Once it looks like this take it off the heat and let's serve. I'm serving my ponzu chicken with rice so I'm just going to place the vegetables over one side of the rice and then the chicken on the other side. I've cut it into strips so it's easy to eat with chopsticks. Finally drizzle generously with the homemade ponzu sauce and that's it delicious citrusy ponzu chicken with rice and vegetables. I hope you enjoyed this video if you want to check out the written recipe it's on my blog the link is in the description. Thanks for watching, hope to see you next time.