Quick and Easy: Chicken Kijiyaki

My thanks to Just Bento and their cookbook for this recipe (slightly altered)


Ingredients:
1 large or 2 medium/small boneless skinless chicken thighs (I know somewhere out there is a health nut saying "Oh, I'm sure it'd be just as good with chicken breasts", let me tell you- it is not.)
3 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce (my personal quirk: feel free to use regular)
3 tbsp aji mirin (*see below for notes)
1 tbsp sugar

Directions:
Measure out the mirin and soy sauce into a small bowl. Set aside. Measure sugar into a small bowl. Set aside. This is important as the pan will be hot when you add these items. There will not be time to measure them out.

Cut chicken thighs into strips about one finger wide and 2 inches long at most. (If you will be making this recipe or other recipes using thighs like this a lot, cut a bunch and divide it out into ziplock baggies as you can see I do. They'll last several months in the freezer this way)

Set out a large nonstick skillet (you can use a different kind of pan if you'd like, but I find it always tears the chicken up). It has to be big enough so that all the chicken can lay in it, flat, barely touching or not touching at all.

Take a paper towel, fold over four times, then hold over the top of a container of vegetable oil. Flip the bottle over briefly, holding the paper towel to the top, then set it back upright. Rub down the skillet with the paper towel. This ensures the chicken will move easily and not break on lifting.

Place the chicken in the pan, making sure it lays as flat as possible. Heat to medium high. Listen for the oil/grease to start "spitting". After about 3 minutes, flip the chicken strips over. The part now facing you should be slightly browned. After another three minutes, flip those chicken thighs again, looking now for a crisp brown-ness. You may have to change their position in the pan a few times to get the best browning.

As each piece gets the crispy brown sides, pull it out of the pan and set it on a plate. Once all the pieces have been pulled out, add the sugar and mirin mixture to the pan. BE CAREFUL!!! The hot pan often causes the mirin mixture to "pop" back up towards you.

Drop the heat to medium-low and stir until sugar dissolves (no time at all). Add chicken back in and flip it a few times in the sauce until well coated. Take off the heat.

I like to serve mine on rice with edamame on the sides as shown at the top of the recipe.

*A note about mirin: This sweet rice sauce can be found in the foreign foods section of grocery stores. I figure if I can find it at Walmart, just about anyone who really wants to can find it where they are.

This is the type of mirin I prefer to cook with: aji mirin.

This is another type of mirin, which honestly I don't much care for but it generally seems to be cheaper: kotteri mirin