Here is a super irresistible easy dish you can easily make at home–the Caramelized Chicken! It only involves three main ingredients, which you probably have right now in your kitchen: Chicken, soy sauce, and sugar.
That’s all there is, and you’ll be eating a superb meal for dinner that you’ll be craving every time from then on. Impress your loved ones with this easy chicken dish by reading this recipe article and learn how to make it now.
What is Caramelized Chicken?
The caramelized chicken is a type of dish that is cooked on a skillet with a sticky, sweet, savory, and sometimes spicy caramel sauce. This chicken dish is usually partnered and is so good with steamed rice.
It is made of chicken with sauce ingredients including soy sauce, some aromatics and flavorings such as onion, garlic, and calamansi or lime juice. The sauce becomes thickened because of the brown sugar that is caramelized while cooking.
Ingredients You’ll Need
Chicken
For the chicken meat, any part of your choice will do. For easier cooking, you can also use filleted (boneless and skinless) parts.
Calamansi Juice
The calamansi juice is an optional ingredient for this recipe, but it adds a nice sour flavor to the chicken dish and it improves the dish overall. Another substitute for this ingredient you can use in case you don’t have this available is lemon juice or lime juice.
Aside from these, you will also use regular pantry ingredients like onion, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, and cooking oil . If you are filling up your pantry, here’s a handy shopping guide:
Equipment You’ll Need
- Cooking Pan (Kawali)- We will do a simple pan frying to cook this dish and you will be needing a regular kawali or cooking pan to do this. You can also use any shallow skillet or casserole for this.
In need of kitchen tools and equipment? Read this before you buy:
How to Cook Caramelized Chicken
Making the caramelized chicken, or the caramel chicken, is something even beginners when it comes to cooking can do without breaking a sweat. To start making this delicious chicken dish, all you have to do is to prepare the ingredients in one cooking pan.
First, you need to saute the onions, and garlic until they bring out their flavor. Second, you will then add in the other ingredients–the chicken, the soy sauce, water, brown sugar, and calamansi juice.
Just make sure that all sides of the chicken are cooked and make sure that the insides are also cooked. Then wait until the sauce has caramelized and is thick enough.
That’s pretty much it! A quick and easy cooking procedure. This dish is best partnered with rice, so be sure to prepare that, too, beforehand!
Cooking Tips
- To prevent the chicken dish from being cooked outside, but still undercooked inside, what you can do is to poke each chicken piece with a toothpick or any other long and thin stick until it reaches the bones in three to five different areas of the chicken before cooking it. This way, the heat will enter inside of the chicken easily and the insides will cook much faster.
- If you’re having trouble caramelizing the sugar while cooking the chicken along with the sauce, what you can do is to melt the sugar separately and combine it later with the sauce until well incorporated. To do this, all you need is to melt the sugar in the oven, or even using a microwave. Pour all the sugar and mix it with a small amount of water and set the microwave to high. Wait until the sugar turns into liquid like a syrup.
How to Serve Caramelized Chicken
This chicken dish is best served with freshly cooked white rice for a lunch or dinner meal. Feel free to pair this with pickled vegetables like atsara or any vegetable dish.
How to Store and Reheat Chicken
Caramelized chicken is best eaten when it is freshly cooked. In case you do have leftovers, place in a clean food container and cover. This will make your chicken last for about 3 days.
To reheat, you can use the microwave oven or reheat in a pan over low to medium heat.
Other Chicken Recipes
- Filipino Fried Chicken (With Gravy) Recipe
- Pininyahang Manok (Filipino Pineapple Chicken) Recipe
- Chicken Afritada (Afritadang Manok) Recipe
- Max’s Style Fried Chicken Recipe
For a quick reference about this recipe, see the recipe table below:
Easy Caramelized Chicken Recipe
Equipment
- Cooking Pan
Ingredients
- 500 g (1.1 lbs) chicken legs and thigh, or any other part, cut into serving pieces
- 1 pc medium-sized onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cup water
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp calamansi juice, (optional)
- 2 tbsp cooking oil
Instructions
- In a cooking pan, pour-in and heat oil over medium heat.
- Add-in the onions, and garlic. Saute until soft and aromatic.
- Add-in the chicken, then pour-in the soy sauce, and water. Add-in the brown sugar. Bring to a boil.
- Add-in the calamansi juice. Simmer while making sure that all sides of the chicken are being cooked. Cook until the chicken is tender and the sauce is caramelized and is thickened.
- Transfer to a serving tray or serving plate. Serve and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
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