California Chicken Marinade
If you are looking for moist, tender, and flavorful chicken, try this marinade! It has teriyaki goodness, and an oriental blend of flavors.
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I know dinner is a success when the only statement I hear repeated continuously from my husband is, “this chicken is sooooo good!”
It is particularly significant in light of him being able to remain so single-minded when the three children seated around him were seeing how many pieces of rice they could stick in their ears. He was right, though, this chicken was great.
Thanks again, Kristin, for coming through with another great recipe for me to try. (Visit Kristin’s recipe blog for even more delightful recipes to choose from.)
My husband loves all things teriyaki – this marinade has a teriyaki goodness to it but it also has an oriental blend of flavors (I’m not quite sure what I mean by that but just go with it) and the main virtue is the chicken is very moist and tender.
Trade Secrets: Since it is below freezing in my neck of the woods and I don’t have a broiler pan, I used my indoor grill pan (top five kitchen “thingies” I can’t live without) and it worked great, but my word of warning is that the marinade kind of sludged at the bottom of my grill pan.
That was probably because I didn’t shake enough of the marinade off the chicken before laying it in the pan and also because I didn’t keep in mind that the marinade has a full cup of sugar in it, which means it is easy to burn while cooking, but all it took was a quick swipe of the pan with a paper towel in between batches, and it worked great.
Next time I’ll probably round up a broiler pan and try it that way to see how it works. Also, I melted the butter for the marinade and before letting it cool I just dumped it right into the rest of the marinade ingredients. The result? Curdled butter that separated from the rest of the marinade. I don’t think it made any impact on taste but it looked frightening and next time I will definitely let the butter cool before mixing it in with the marinade.
California Chicken Marinade
Ingredients
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup melted butter
- 1 tsp. dry mustard
- ¼ cup water
Instructions
- Marinate chicken strips all day. Broil for 10 minutes or so, depending on how thick you cut the strips. This also works great on chicken breasts on the grill.
Hello from Jamie and Liz! We’re your friends in McMinnville, Oregon that talk about you like we’re real friends that share recipes. (Now that you’re in Idaho, we might actually meet one day!)
I just wanted you to know that this recipe is what Liz’s son requested for his 12th birthday. He likes it charred out on the grill.
He also requested your Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Brownie Cake. One day when he goes to college and on his mission, if someone asks him what his favorite foods are, he’ll have to tell them the recipes all came from Mel. People will ask if that’s his aunt, and he’ll have to laugh and tell them that Mel is is mom and Jamie’s imaginary friend. However, actually become your friend is more likely than my daughter marrying Shemar Moore.
Haha, you are hilarious!
I mixed the melted butter with the brown sugar first. Then added the other ingredients and had no problems with clumping. Can’t wait to grill this up and eat it tonight!
Mel, this is my go to chicken recipe at least once a week! I love this marinate more than any other chicken recipe. AND best of all my kids will eat every single piece I give them!! Looking forward to grilling some chicken tonight!
One of the best chicken recipes I’ve ever had. My kids loved it.
Rob – to be honest, it has been years since I’ve made this. I vaguely remember clumps of butter in the marinade, but I agree that it is odd to use butter in a marinade. I’ll have to remake this soon and come up with a different variation.
How do you prevent the butter from curdling and separating from the rest of the marinade? I let the butter cool first and it still solidified while in the fridge. I don’t understand how you would go about preventing this, I have never heard of actually marinating something in butter.
Wow. Just finished eating this. YUMMY. I’m not a huge meat lover, but I took 2 bites of this and had to send my husband a text message declaring “I don’t even like meat but this is so good I am eating 3 pieces!!” hahaha I broiled it, which I was nervous about because I have never broiled a meat. Turned out delectable. Thank you so much for your blog; I don’t know what I would do without it—from the menu planning help to the tips to the recipes.
I took this on a family camping trip and everyone licked their plates clean. I made the marinade at home and stored it in a mason jar then just added it to the chicken the day I planned to cook it. We all think it would be wonderful as a stir fry too. Some fresh steamed veggies and rice with the flavorful chicken…yumm. Thanks for another great recipe.
Sonya – Love the idea of storing the marinade separately and taking this along on a camping trip! And yes, I bet you are on to something with the stir fry!
I’m so glad you like it! And yeah, my recipes are definitely not known for their health value.
It’s obviously no coincidence I like them, then. I’m not exactly a health nut, as illustrated by the recipes on here!