Vietnamese Baked Chicken
The original recipe: Vietnamese-Style Baked Chicken on Serious Eats
served with a sweet kale vegetable salad kit
Serves 2-3 (2 thighs vs. 3 thighs per person)
INGREDIENTS
1,000g (approx.) bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 6 thighs)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 tsp sriracha
1.5 tbsp fresh lime juice
zest of 1/2 a lime
3 garlic cloves, grated
2 tbsp olive oil
DIRECTIONS
1. Place the chicken in a large ziploc bag.
2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the marinade: soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, ginger, sriracha, lime juice, lime zest, garlic, and olive oil.
3. Seal the bag and marinate in the fridge up to 4 hours.
*We marinated ours for 2.5 hours, flipping the bag around halfway through. It was so flavourful, but I think it would have been even better if we left it for the full 4 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 425F and place a wire rack on top of a large baking sheet lined with aluminum foil.
5. Place chicken on the wire rack (shaking off excess marinade) and bake at 425F for 35 minutes or until juices run clear and chicken is cooked through.
My Changes & Notes:
1. The chicken.
The original recipe calls for 900g of chicken - I got pretty close with 6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs weighing in at 1,023g; the amount of marinade from the original recipe worked just fine.
Definitely take the time to marinate this as long as possible (up to the 4 hour mark). We marinated for 2.5 hours (massaging the bag and flipping it over halfway through) and loved the flavour - I bet it would have been even better if we left it in for longer. While our skin didn't get overly crispy, the flavour was AMAZING. The original recipe says you could try broiling it to crisp the skin, but ours already got some nice charring on it from baking alone that we didn't want to risk burning the skin.
No changes were made to the bake time; 35 minutes exactly at 425F worked perfectly for the guys pictured below.
2. The marinade.
We followed the recipe quite closely, changing only the following:
Zest of 1/2 a lime (instead of 1 tsp finely grated lime zest)
3 tsp sriracha (instead of 2 tsp sambal oelek)