Chicken Teriyaki

Method

1. 1

   Stir the soy sauce, water, pineapple juice, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger until the sugar dissolves. Divide it in half. One half goes into a dish with the thighs. The other half goes into a saucepan and never touches the raw chicken. That clean half is the sauce you will ladle.

2. 2

   Turn the thighs in the marinade. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes to 4 hours. Not overnight. Pineapple juice left on raw chicken all day turns the surface mealy.

3. 3

   Simmer the clean half for 5 minutes. Stir the cornstarch with 1 tablespoon of water, whisk it in, and simmer 1 minute more, until the sauce coats a spoon. Hold it warm. A shop plate needs a sauce thick enough to cling to the rice.

4. 4

   Lift the thighs out and let the excess marinade drip off. Throw that used marinade away. Do not boil it and pour it over dinner. Heat the avocado oil in a wide skillet over medium-high, or heat a grill. Cook the thighs 5 to 7 minutes a side, until the edges char a little and the thickest part reads 165°F. The sugar darkens fast. If the pan is smoking black, the heat is too high.

5. 5

   Rest 5 minutes. Slice the chicken across the grain. Mound the rice on each plate, lay the slices on top, and ladle the thickened sauce over the meat and down into the rice. The wet rice is the point of the plate.

From the kitchen

• This is not the teriyaki sauce recipe on this site. That one is a Japanese tare of soy, mirin, and sake, and it is what the beef uses. A Pacific Northwest counter is sweeter, and it has garlic, ginger, and pineapple.
• The shops use boneless, skinless thighs. Skin-on chicken is a different dish.
• If you have no pineapple juice, apple juice is the closest stand-in. Water in its place makes a plainer sauce.