Glossy, Tender Air Fryer Teriyaki Chicken Recipe

Air Fryer Teriyaki chicken is one of my all-time favorite ways of cooking and eating chicken. I find that the best cuts to use are either chicken breasts or thighs that have been boned and skinned.

When prepared and cooked well, they produce the most succulent, tasty, tender chicken imaginable, especially after being marinated in Teriyaki sauce.

Jump to:

• Watch the video
• The origin of teriyaki sauce
• The best chicken cuts for this teriyaki delight
• Grab these ingredients
• Step by step instructions
• Notes
• Do Teriyaki and Hibachi mean the same thing?
• Interesting recipes with chicken
• Full Recipe

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Creating healthy fried food

An air fryer is a great way of cooking. It's like the healthiest way of frying anything. You get the crispy texture of deep fat frying but using little or no oil. If you're calorie counting, it's a great way to cook.

You can enjoy all the pleasure of sinful frying, sin-free. How good is that?

This air fryer chicken recipe I am about to share with you has a double bonus. No oil (or the absolute minimum, as you will see), and no breadcrumbs either.

Don't worry; you won't miss the breading because the teriyaki marinade blesses the chicken with a great char, and when you bite into the chicken - you'll find it succulent and tender.

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Watch the video

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The origin of teriyaki sauce

If the air fryer is the star of the show, the teriyaki sauce is the chorus line, and it sings with flavor.

It's one of the best-ever marinades and owes its existence to Japanese immigrants who settled in Hawaii, or so the story goes.

On their arrival, these newcomers began using fresh, local produce such as pineapples, which they added to their soy sauce.

A few little tweaks later, and the teriyaki sauce we all know and love today was born.

It gained popularity here in the States on the back of the boom in the number of Japanese restaurants.

When used in the air fryer teriyaki dish, I am about to tell you about creating one of the tastiest fried chicken creations ever.

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The best chicken cuts for this teriyaki delight

The best cuts of chicken to use for this teriyaki dish are either chicken breasts or thighs. Both need to have the bones and skin removed.

The thighs have more calories per gram than the breast because they contain a little more fat. Breasts have 1.65 calories per gram, whereas thighs have 2.01.

But because of the extra fat, thighs are that much tastier and a little more succulent too.

If you take an average breast at 172 grams, the calorie count is 284. If you take two thighs weighing 104 grams in total, that will give you 218 calories.

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Three thighs will provide you with 156 grams and 327 calories. Pro-rata they have more calories, but it's up to you how many you service per person.

I go for thighs every time. Not only are they tastier and juicier, but they also take less time to cook. They are cheaper, too.

If you want to use breasts instead, no problem. However, I would recommend beating them with a meat mallet to even out the thickness.

If you decide to use cuts of chicken with the bone still in, forgo the marinating them, but baste them with the teriyaki sauce during cooking.

The only thing I will warn you about is they take longer to cook than when boned, which increases the risk of the marinade burning before they are cooked through properly.

As you know, undercooked chicken is a health hazard.

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Grab these ingredients

You can use any store-bought teriyaki sauce. Some are better than others, but even the not-so-good ones are still very tasty.

Take a look at five of the best on the Food Champs website. But you can make your own, too.

• 3 lbs chicken thigh

Teriyaki sauce ingredients

• 1 cup brown sugar
• ½ cup soy sauce
• ½ cup pineapple juice from the can
• ½ cup pineapple chunks
• 2 tablespoon rice vinegar (or Mirin)
• 2 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 2 teaspoon sesame oil

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Step by step instructions

Step 1 Prep the marinade

In a separate bowl, mix the ½ cup of pineapple juice, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, soy sauce, and pineapple chunks. Mix it nicely and set it aside.

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Step 2 Marinate the chicken

• Prep your chicken and place them in a flat bottom dish. Pour half amount of the marinade mixture into the chicken. Mix it to coat them evenly. Cover with a cling-wrap.
• Or get yourself a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, and into it, add the chicken pieces and the marinade. Zip the bag closed and shake it thoroughly to coat each piece of chicken.

How long to marinate the chicken in Teriyaki sauce?

• Find some space in your fridge and marinate for a minimum of 3 to 4 hours. I prefer to leave it for eight hours or, better still, overnight. You can let it marinate for as long as 24 hours if you so desire.

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Step 3 Reduce the sauce for basting

Now, in a small saucepan, pour the remaining marinade Teriyaki sauce. Lower the heat and cook for around five to seven minutes until it reaches a nice thick consistency. You can store it for up to two to three weeks in your fridge.

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Step 4 Air frying the chicken

• Turn your air fryer on and pre-heat at a temperature of 390°F (or 199°C) for between three and five minutes.
• Remove the marinated chicken from the bag, draining off any excess marinade.
• Transfer the marinated chicken into the air fryer basket. Cook for approximately 15 to 18 minutes (adjust the time according to the size or thickness of the chicken pieces). I used chicken thighs with bone-in for this recipe and cooked the chicken for 15 minutes.

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Step 5 Baste the chicken

• Halfway through the cooking time, turn the chicken pieces over and baste them with your reduced Teriyaki sauce.

Note: You want the teriyaki sauce to caramelize on the outside of the chicken. You also need to make sure that the internal temperature reads between 170°F and 175°F. An instant-read thermometer is perfect for this job.

• Remove the chicken from the air fryer and set it aside to rest for up to 5 minutes.

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Step 6 Serve and enjoy

• Please feel free to drizzle over any remaining teriyaki sauce and garnish some sesame seeds if the mood takes you.

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Notes

To make sure your marinated chicken doesn't stick to your air fryer's basket, you can spray a little non-stick cooking spray on its inner surfaces.

Sprays that don't contain propellants are said to be safe to use with air dryers.

However, if you want to avoid using sprays altogether, you can always think about seasoning your air fryer basket.

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Do Teriyaki and Hibachi mean the same thing?

If you frequent Japanese restaurants, you've probably come across the word "hibachi," and you could be wondering if it means the same thing as teriyaki. In a word - no.

The Japanese word "hibachi" describes both a type of grill and a Japanese-style recipe cooked on the grill. The term "teriyaki" refers solely to a recipe and not a cooking utensil.

However, the two cooking methods are similar, although hibachi sauce and teriyaki sauce are different animals.

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Hibachi - the cooking utensil

The meaning of the word "hibachi" in English is "firepot." A Japanese hibachi is traditionally a heater that is made from wood that has a metal lining.

They burn charcoal or wood. They are not portable devices but pieces of furniture, often beautifully decorated.

Today, in the US, the word "hibachi" is used to describe a portable open-hearth style of grill.

Some use electricity as a power source, while others burn charcoal or gas, and while some have flat iron heating surfaces, others have ridged grill plates.

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Cooking hibachi dishes

You can cook various foods on a hibachi, anything from burritos, kebabs, sausages, and steaks, to pancakes.

When served, a typical hibachi dish is accompanied by vegetables such as mushrooms, onions, and zucchini, sliced or julienned, and sauteed in butter with a dash of soy sauce plus some rice.

Hibachi meals are sort of like Japanese barbeques and can be cooked on such or on hot plates.

There is a simple recipe for Hibachi-style steak on the Spruce Eats website, which will give you a good idea of an easy hibachi dish.

We Americans have created Yum Yum sauce which is the perfect accompaniment to a hibachi feast.

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Teriyaki type dishes

As I mentioned before, teriyaki and hibachi dishes are often confused, but strictly speaking, hibachi is a cooking utensil and a dish while teriyaki is a dish of food.

But in the same way that people talk about having a barbecue, they also talk about having a hibachi which refers to the event rather than the food.

The term "teriyaki" means "glossy grilled." Any meats cooked on a hibachi grill or barbecue in the teriyaki style are marinated, coated, and cooked in a teriyaki style sauce as detailed earlier.

On the other hand, a hibachi dish, or what has become known as a hibachi dish, only uses soy sauce.

However, lots of Americans do like to serve their "hibachi dishes" with Yum Yum sauce, as mentioned above.

When I told you about the origins of teriyaki sauce earlier, I mentioned that it was the creation of Japanese immigrants who settled in Hawaii.

The fact of the matter is that there is no "official" teriyaki sauce in Japanese history. In Japan, the term "teriyaki" refers to the cooking method, specifically to do with oily fish like mackerel, salmon, trout, and tuna.

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Alternative ingredients for making a Teriyaki sauce

If you've got your heart set on making your own teriyaki sauce, you don't have to stick exactly to the recipe I outlined earlier.

Like many things in cooking, cooks and chefs tend to create their own versions of the classics, and a home-made teriyaki sauce is no different.

A typical teriyaki sauce's taste characteristics include saltiness, sweetness, umami, and a subtle tanginess.

If you don't have any of the real stuff at home and push comes to shove, you can substitute other things to give you that melody of flavors.

Some people mess with the ingredients on purpose to customize the source for certain meats.

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The all-important saltiness

The saltiness that comes from fermented soy, known as umami, is fundamental to the taste of teriyaki sauce.

If heaven forbid, you find you're out of soy sauce, and you haven't yet thrown yourself upon your ceremonial sword, you can substitute something like:

• Coconut Aminos
• Liquid Aminos
• Fish sauce
• Maggi Seasoning
• Miso
• Tamari
• Umeboshi Vinegar
• Worcestershire sauce

As teriyaki has those salt and sweet flavor notes, you could use Ponzu sauce, or Japanese citrus sauce as it is otherwise known, to give you a deeper, sweeter taste.

You can reduce one cup of this sauce down to half a cup over medium heat on your stovetop to get a sweet, soy-flavored substitute.

Another way of using Ponzu is as a marinade.

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For the sweetness element

The Japanese do use white cane sugar in many of their recipes. However, the sweetness you get in teriyaki sauce is perhaps more of "dark" sweetness.

Original teriyaki sauce recipes included soy sauce and the sweet Japanese rice wine, mirin.

You can add brown sugar, a combination of white sugar with molasses, or honey as an alternative.

All of these can give you that depth of sweetness for which you are looking.

Another option is to use satay with a bit of sugar.

The alcohol in teriyaki sauce doesn't just help with sweetening - it also plays a part in caramelizing and darkening the outside of the meat as it cooks.

If you're on the wagon, you can always use cider, rice, or wine vinegar with sugar.

Another way of introducing sweetness is with citrus juices. Some people use a frozen lemonade concentrate or apple jelly. I added pineapple juice and chunks to my marinade.

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Injecting some zing

A good teriyaki sauce has a certain zing about it that is not always that easy to define.

It is believed that the Hawaiian Americans added things like green onion and ginger into the mix as teriyaki sauce went through certain stages of its evolution into what we know it to be today.

Other things you can add to your recipe to give your sauce a little oomph include things like grated ginger root, grated onion, a sprinkling of red chili flakes, and oriental spices such as star anise.

Another idea is the Chinese five-spice, which contains cinnamon, cloves, fennel, and ginger.

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Sticky glossiness

I mentioned earlier in the proceedings that the word "teriyaki" translates into "glossy grilled." So when we talk about substitutes, you need to add that glossiness and give the sauce its syrup-like texture.

You can get the thicker consistency you're looking for by boiling the sauce over medium heat until it reduces by 50%.

Not only will this help to ensure the sauce sticks to the meat, or indeed any other ingredients you coat with it, but it will also work towards giving you that caramelized, shiny finish.

• If you're worried about your sauce becoming too salty or sweet through the reduction process, another way of thickening is to add a mixture of 2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with ¼ cup of water.

This works particularly well when baking in the oven, or indeed in the air fryer, which is where we came in.

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Interesting recipes with chicken

• Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken - Bun Ga Nuong
• Vietnamese Fish Sauce Chicken Wings
• Hibachi Chicken Benihana
• 3-Cup Chicken Recipe

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Full Recipe