Nomiku Files: Soy Sauce Chicken

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This has been a long time coming, and a Costco sized pack of chicken thighs combined with working on my first mealtrain was what inspired it.

Whenever I go to Costco, usually Sundays, I tend to overbuy a bunch of protein and then immediately go home and re-package it into reasonable serving sized portions to freeze. This way on weeknights I can take out a packet in the morning and leave in the fridge section, and by the time I get home I have defrosted meats ready to sous vide. I do this with scallops, salmon, chicken, shrimp and beef.

Packed up and ready to go.

This time I bought a huge pack of chicken thighs for making hainan chicken. Recently prepared a mealtrain delivery for my friend Emily who is going through Breast Cancer treatment. Through making the meal for Ems and her husband, I realized how much I enjoy cooking and sharing home recipes with friends and family. It was also a challenge to create something within the constraints of her dietary restrictions, and make it tasty, as most of the foods on the list seemed pretty bland and flavorless on their own. The demonstration also peaked their interest in sous vide, the hainan chicken recipe and they coveted the leftovers.

I digress. After making 4 bags of the hainan chicken, I still had about 4 servings left of chicken to bag, but I didn’t want to have 8 servings of the same flavor in my freezer. Instead I googled for a soysauce chicken recipe, that I would adapt to sous vide.

The Rasa Malaysia was my hands down favorite of the recipes I found. The ingredients list and flavor profile fell in line with what I was thinking. The only changes I wanted to make was rationing the boil sauce to two ziplock bags with 2 chicken thighs per bag and switching out water for low sodium chicken broth, so I’d get more flavor in the bag. The below recipe makes 2 servings.

Throw everything in a bag.

Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs
• 2-inch ginger (skin peeled and lightly pounded)
• 4 cloves garlic (lightly pounded)
• 2 stalks scallions (cut into 2-inch lengths)
• 2 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick (about 2-inch length)
• 1 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon Chinese rose wine (preferred) or Shaoxing wine
• 3 dashes white pepper powder
• 4 oz. rock sugar
• 4 cans of chicken broth

Preparation

1. Set up Nomiku water bath and turn temperature to 64ºC (147.2ºF).
2. Gather all your ingredients and tools.
3. Chop all the scallions and ginger.


Nomiku Files: Sous Vide Soy Sauce Chicken by the//value

4. Clean chicken by rubbing with kosher salt and rinsing clean.


Nomiku Files: Sous Vide Soy Sauce Chicken by the//value

5. Split up ingredients evenly into two sous vide ready bags.
6. Sous vide for 2 hours.
7. Serve with rice, kimchi, or whatever you like to eat your chicken with.

Results

The chicken was tender, moist, and had all the comfort of the traditional soy sauce chicken, minus clean up and that I could set it and walk away for 2 hours. Super happy with having another option of flavor to my pre-frozen baggies of sous vide ready goodness.