Marinate Chicken In This Sauce For 10x The Flavor

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The popularity of chicken recipes cannot be overstated, as home cooks are often on the hunt for quick and delicious ways to prepare this versatile meat for the dinner table. Unfortunately, there are many unhealthy store-bought chicken marinade brands on the market. Making a homemade marinade and having control over each ingredient can help with that concern. So if you are looking for a powerhouse ingredient that will impart ten times the flavor into your chicken dinner, look no further than your pantry and get out that bottle of soy sauce. 

Marinating chicken can be a pretty straightforward task, even though everyone makes mistakes in the process sometimes. One tip you may not know is to prepare the chicken first before pouring on the soy sauce. Depending on whether you want to grill, roast, stir-fry, or steam it, the way the chicken is cut matters. Think about whether you want your chicken in whole pieces, strips, chunks, or pounded, a simple trick that makes chicken breasts so much better. Once you have cut the chicken, pour on the soy sauce, and marinate it for six to 24 hours in the fridge. However, according to the USDA, don't marinate your chicken for too long, as it can get mushy after sitting in the marinade after a day. Once the chicken is marinated, proceed with the rest of your recipe.

Full of umami, soy sauce is an ingredient that plays well with others and increases the overall flavor of your dish tenfold. Consider its complementary culinary companions, like ginger, garlic, and spring onions, which help give an aromatic lift to soy sauce. In this grilled chicken recipe, soy sauce is paired with dried herbs like rosemary, fennel, and thyme. You can add sweet or acidic ingredients to the marinade as well, like sugar or honey and vinegar or lime juice. Be careful with salty ingredients, though, as soy sauce is often salty enough on its own. A decent starting ratio for marinades is about a quarter cup of marinade to a pound of meat, but if a full quarter cup of soy sauce sounds like too much, reduce it to two tablespoons and top up with water and other liquids until you reach a quarter cup of marinade. Remember to taste the marinade first before adding it to the raw chicken!

Hands down, the best soy sauce brand is La Choy, which is available at major retailers. While it may not be naturally fermented like many other soy sauce brands, it has great value for money. At less than $4 per 15-ounce bottle, it gives you more bang for your buck compared to Kikkoman, which for the same price, only offers a 5-ounce bottle. If you are concerned about wasting the marinade ingredients when the chicken is ready to cook, you can reuse your leftover marinade and create a glaze you can serve atop your cooked chicken later. Just remember to boil the marinade first to make sure it is safe from any contamination from the raw chicken juice.