Hawaiian Shoyu Chicken — 🌸🍗👏🏻Chicken thighs are braised in a sweet and savory sauce made with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ginger, and more to create the most FLAVORFUL and tender chicken! It’s an EASY, one-pot stovetop chicken recipe that cooks in about 30 minutes. When you need a unique but simple chicken dinner recipe, try this one – you may even feel like you just took a trip to the Hawaiian islands!
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Have you ever heard of or tried shoyu chicken? If you answered no, that’s ok because I am here to explain what it is and why you need to put this into your dinner rotation!
This easy shoyu chicken recipe is a Hawaiian-inspired dish — soy sauce is commonly called ‘shoyu’ in Hawaii, which is how this skillet chicken dinner got its name!
This one-pot (or one-skillet) recipe starts with chicken thighs that are cooked in a sweet and savory sauce. The recipe has layers of flavor thanks to the combination of salty soy sauce, tangy rice vinegar, sweet mirin, and aromatic garlic and ginger. This sauce simmers and then you thicken it at the end to coat every inch of those glorious chicken thighs.
We love eating this chicken with steamed white rice, vegetables, or a Hawaiian macaroni salad. The rice acts as a sponge and soaks up the excess sauce, so every bite of this dish is infused with shoyu flavor!
The next time you need a fast, easy dinner recipe that can be made in a single skillet, make this Hawaiian-style shoyu chicken. 30-minute meals like this are lifesavers on busy weeknights!
Ingredients for This Recipe
You need very few ingredients to make shoyu-style chicken, but there are a couple specialty items you might not keep stocked in your pantry such as mirin or rice vinegar.
However, your local major grocery store chain should have everything in the Asian or ethnic foods section. Or just order online with the links provided.
- Skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs
- Chicken broth
- Soy sauce
- Brown sugar
- Mirin – wondering what this is and how it differs from rice vinegar? Read the FAQs below
- Rice vinegar – sometimes called ‘rice wine vinegar’, but the two are one in the same, just a difference in labeling
- Garlic cloves
- Ginger
- Water
- Cornstarch
- Red pepper flakes, optional
- Salt and black pepper, optional and to taste
- Green onions or sesame seeds, optional, for serving
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Hawaiian-Style Shoyu Chicken
This is such a quick and easy recipe with minimal babysitting involved. You only have to flip the chicken once while it cooks, so I suggest using the rest of the cook time to prepare the rice, steam some veggies, or throw together a simple side salad.
Here’s an overview of how the Hawaiian-style recipe is prepared:
- In a bowl, combine the chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, mirin, rice wine vinegar, garlic, and ginger together.
- Add the chicken thighs to a large skillet, large pot, or dutch oven. Pour the soy sauce mixture over top.
- Turn the stove to medium-high heat and bring the sauce to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer the chicken thighs until tender, this will take around 30 minutes. Flip the chicken halfway through the cook time to ensure they cook evenly.
- Once cooked, remove the chicken to a clean plate.
- Whisk together the water and cornstarch, then add to the cornstarch slurry to the shoyu sauce in the saucepan.
- Add the red pepper flakes and cook over low heat until the sauce begins to thicken.
- Return the chicken to the skillet, skin side up, and spoon the sauce over the chicken.
- Season with salt and pepper if desired, garnish with sliced green onions, and sesame seeds before serving!
How to Tell When Chicken Thighs Are Done
You’ll know the bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs are done when they’re no longer pink inside and the juices run clear when pierced with a fork.
To be completely sure the chicken thighs are done, don’t guess! Insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the meat. If the internal temperature registers 170ºF to 175ºF, the chicken is done.
Technically, chicken thighs are safe to eat once it registers an internal temperature of 165ºF. However, dark meat (like thighs) is tougher and therefore needs to cook for longer in order to fully tenderize and be super juicy.
Recipe FAQs
Both mirin and rice wine vinegar are common ingredients in Japanese cooking, and it’s easy to confuse the two.
Mirin is a type of sweet rice wine that’s commonly used in sushi rice, teriyaki chicken, and here for shoyu chicken. It’s comparable to sake but sweeter.
Rice vinegar is more acidic than mirin and is also a bit more bitter in flavor, although as vinegars go, it’s still quite mild in my opinion.
Although both are made from fermented rice, their flavor profiles are unique and as such I recommend using both in this recipe.
Both are essential to really give the Asian-inspired flavor profile that shoyu chicken has. However, if you don’t have one (guessing it’s mirin), you can try using just rice vinegar. I would increase the rice vinegar amount just slightly up from 1/4 cup as recommended to 1/3 cup. I haven’t made shoyu chicken this way but am suggesting it as a logical option, although I haven’t tested it.
I suggest using a Japanese-style soy sauce for this recipe. Kikkoman is a popular brand of soy sauce that works well here, but feel free to use any soy sauce you like from places like Trader Joe’s, Walmart, etc.
No you don’t. There are brands such as Aloha and 365 Organic (Whole Foods) that are labeled as such but they aren’t necessary and I use whatever reduced sodium or lite soy sauce I have on hand for the soy sauce portion of this recipe.
Probably, but chicken thighs are the traditional choice for this recipe. Thighs become incredibly moist and tender once cooked low and slow in the sauce, so that’s what I recommend using if at all possible.
Possibly, but I’ve only tested this recipe with cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens the sauce without affecting the flavor whatsoever, and it also makes the sauce super glossy. It’s a very inexpensive ingredients, lasts for ages, and I have tons of other recipes using cornstarch.
Yes, Hawaiian shoyu chicken reheats well and remains tender even after being refrigerated! It’s great for meal prepping, and you can safely store the chicken in the same container as any rice and veggies if you plan on reheating everything together for a quick plate lunch or dinners throughout the week.
What to Serve with Shoyu Chicken
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Hawaiian Shoyu Chicken
Ingredients
- 2 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (5 or 6 chicken thighs)
- 1 cup reduced sodium chicken broth
- ¾ cup reduced sodium or lite soy sauce
- ½ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ⅓ cup mirin
- ¼ cup rice vinegar (sometimes labeled rice wine vinegar, same thing)
- 3 to 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger OR 1 1/2 teaspoons dried ginger
- 3 tablespoons water
- 3 tablespoon cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
- Thinly sliced green onions (or sesame seeds), optional for garnishing
- Salt and pepper, to taste if desired
Instructions
- Place the chicken in the Dutch oven or skillet with the skin side up; set aside briefly.
- To a small bowl, add the broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, mirin, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, whisk to combine, and evenly pour the mixture over the chicken.
- Bring to a boil over high heat and after the liquid boils, turn the heat to medium-low or low, and simmer for about 30 minutes, flipping chicken over once midway through cooking (or braising as it's technically called, meaning using a liquid and cooking more slowly over lower heat). Cooking Tips – I recommend cooking dark meat (thighs) until a digital thermometer reads 170-175F. I recommend using a thermometer and not guessing. Thighs are tougher than breasts/white meat so cooking them to a higher temperature compared to the 165F for white helps to tenderize dark meat.
- After thighs are done, remove them from the skillet, and place on a plate momentarily. Keep the cooking liquids in the bottom of the skillet.
- In a small bowl, stir together the water and cornstarch to make a slurry.
- Add the slurry to the liquid in the bottom of the skillet, add the red pepper flakes, stir to combine, and heat over medium to medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until the sauce begins to bubble lightly and thicken. Stir nearly continuously. Sauce Tips – The point of the slurry is to thicken the cooking juices to form a thicker, more condensed sauce that will stick to the chicken. Sauce always seems thinner/runnier when it's still in the pot, and still warm or hot, and always thickens and tightens up as it cools. Therefore, don't be too worried if it's not getting super tight, it doesn't need to.
- Add the chicken back into the pot, flip it over a few times and toss it around to coat it on all sides with the sauce.
- Optionally, evenly garnish with green onions (or sesame seeds).
- Salt and Pepper – Because I didn't call for any additional salt or pepper in this recipe since there's salt in many ingredients (broth, soy sauce, mirin), you may or may not want to season with salt at the end, depending on if your products were reduced/lite/lower sodium or not, and your general preference for salt. The same goes for pepper, the red pepper flakes may or may not be sufficient, depending on your preferences. If the dish tastes at all flat or boring, it'll benefit for a bit of both salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
- Storage – Leftovers will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Reheat gently in the microwave or as desired.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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