Soy Sauce Chicken or Shoyu Chicken

North Americans Call it Soy Sauce Chicken!

Soy Sauce Chicken is what the Hawaiian’s call Shoyu Chicken. Obviously a Soy based recipe involving chicken. Not too complicated, but it does take a good hour and a half to get to the finished product. Reduction is your friend when it comes to cooking this recipe, so you do need to pay attention to what you are doing; to an extent anyway. Once you have all of the ingredients put together, all you have to do to manage the cooking is flip the chicken back and forth in a timely fashion; every 25 to 30 minutes. In between I usually do other things. I actually got a work out in and exercised in the back yard the entire time I filmed this recipe.

In the video, I mention that you can further reduce the sauce after you’ve pulled the chicken from the pot. The reason why this is a good idea is because you can lay down another layer of sweet caramelized sauce over the top of the chicken once you pull it from the grill, and you can add it to your rice. My biggest problem is that I don’t like to waste. If I can flip the reduction and turn it into an awesome sauce, that’s a win-win for everyone. I mean, we make gravy from Beef Roasts and turkey don’t we? Exactly!

So there’s one of two things you want to do when you’re making this Soy Sauce Chicken. You can add all the ingredients at the beginning and have a perfect sauce just waiting for you after you’ve taken the Soy Sauce Chicken to the Grill(which is easier and more ideal), or you can spare yourself the sugar content and control how much you add when you reduce the Shoyu Chicken Sauce. Because we are reducing, the salt from the Soy Sauce is going to impose an overwhelming flavor if you don’t add other ingredients to get it under control. Among these ingredients is Vinegar, more Sugar and water. And it’s simple. You add twice the sugar, half the vinegar and an equal amount of water. That means, if you started out with 1 cup of sugar at the beginning of the recipe, you are going to add a second when you reduce the sauce; 1/2 a cup of white vinegar and 1 1/2 cups of water. Taste it. If it’s too bitter or too salty, just add more sugar. Bring this to a boil and reduce while you’re grilling the Soy Sauce Chicken.

Soy Sauce Chicken Ingredients:

1 dozen mixed chicken pieces, wings, thighs, legs and Breasts
8 oz Soy Sauce then fill to the top of chicken with water
2 Green Onions
4 slices of Ginger
1 cup of Brown Sugar
1 tsp Anise
Fresh Cilantro (small hand full)

Bring all the ingredients to a boil and reduce the heat to medium, stirring and turning the chicken occasionally (every 25 to 30 minutes). Cooking time will take approximately 1 1/2 hours to fully absorb the flavor and get tender enough to take it to the grill. Be sure to save the leftover sauce in the bottom of the pan for basting and also for seasoning over rice. Grilling on High heat will only take about 5 minutes. It’s not required but it puts a nice texture and some beautiful grill marks on the skin. I hope you try this Soy Sauce Chicken recipe soon!

Perfect Tempura Every Time

Tempura is Touchy!

Lets nail down the issues most people have with making Tempura, starting with buying it in a box. For the most part, you’re just buying a box of flour with a fancy picture on the front that shows you how good it could look if you buy their product. But does that make sense? You’ve got flour at home in your kitchen, right? Oh, maybe you need the directions on the back of the box. Wait, that doesn’t make sense either because you’ve got the web at your finger tips. You can just look it up. So here we are, you and I, and we’re going to get through this together.

Tempura in a Box

The truth is that no matter what the contents of that Tempura box are, flour, corn starch or whatever, the box directions are WRONG! Sure they give you a few pointers from step 1 to 3 but they don’t talk about a few key issues you will have if you don’t mix it in the right order, if you just use regular tap water or if you don’t keep your batter ice cold. That’s right. If you ignore any one of these 3 things, your Tempura is not going to turn out right.

Tempura Ingredients:

1 egg yoke
1 cup Tonic or Seltzer Water, Carbanated is the key
1 cup Flour

Mix the ingredients in a bowl over the top of another bowl full of ice water
Stir the liquids first, then add the flour and don’t over mix; leave it lumpy
Use ice cold Tonic or Seltzer water, not Tap, to get the batter to poof up

Watch the video tutorial and follow these simple instructions and you will have perfect Tempura, every single time.

Lobster Ravioli Sauce

A very creamy Lobster Ravioli Sauce

Lobster Ravioli Sauce can be tricky. Good thing I’ve got a video making this sauce with My Borsellini recipe. I have always loved the sweet flavor that comes from a very thin evenly spread sauce like this one so I’ve incorporated the idea into a few recipes of my own.

My Lobster Ravioli Sauce is….

The only difference between my Borsellini recipe and my Lobster Ravioli Sauce recipe is this recipe calls for lobster; so it needs to be either added in with the mushrooms or swapped out and substituted all together. Also when it calls for the stock, use clam juice instead. The great thing about this dish is you can use different raviolis if you’d like that have just cheese or maybe even vegetables. The reason I say that is because that’s exactly what I did here. I cheated and bought a frozen 5 cheese ravioli bag from the grocery for six bucks that feeds 4. Why? First, I love cheese; mmm….Second, price;”Low budget wonder” remember….Third, raviolis can be tedious to make from scratch and I wanted to save time….And last but not least, Five, This really gives a good variety and accentuates the Lobster Ravioli Sauce! Here’s the video for the sauce and in the mean time, get boiling/ steaming those Lobster tails and claws cause you’re going to need the meat!

Lobster Ravioli Sauce Recipe

2 oz unsalted butter
1/2 tsp chopped or minced garlic
1 stock chopped shallots
1/2 tsp of minced anchovy paste, or 1 whole anchovy
1/2 cup clam juice
4 ounce chopped chunks of Lobster meat
2 ounces cognac (amaretto/cognac gives an extra almond flavor)
1 lemon juice squeeze (about 1 Tbsp)
10 ounces heavy cream
1 pinch of cayenne
2 tbsp of Parmesan Cheese

Make sure you babysit this recipe because you don’t want the bottom to burn. In order to keep that from happening you’re going to have to keep a constant stir in between ingredients. Use a medium high to high heat to keep it bubbling. I add small amounts of heavy cream to the boil just to cool it off and repeat. If you add all of it at once, the reduction for the sauce to thicken will seem like an eternity before it’s done. But if you do it right you’ll be enjoying one of life’s delicacies…choking down a few ravioli’s smothered in my Lobster Ravioli Sauce!