Soy Sauce Chicken Marinade & Recipe

This soy sauce chicken marinade recipe is simple to make, delicious to eat, and uses affordable ingredients if you are trying to make your budget stretch. I love that this recipe uses chicken thighs, because they are so tender and again, affordable. You could really use any kind of chicken with this recipe. It would be perfect for chicken tenders, chicken breasts, chickens skewers and more as well.

We also love this simple Grilled Chicken Marinade if you want more ideas, especially ones you can put on the grill.

Tips for making the best Soy Sauce Chicken Recipe:

Here are a few tips to know ahead of time to make this recipe the best it can be.

Once you have made the Soy Sauce Chicken Marinade, let the chicken marinate in it overnight if possible. This makes it really easy to cook up the next day, with a little prep work ahead of time, and it will have maximum flavor.
The instructions below will tell you how to bake the chicken in the over. It could also be done in the crockpot on slow all day too. This is best if you are using a skinless chicken recipe though (the oven will crisp up the skin, where as a crock pot won’t).
If you do use a different type of chicken, you will need to adjust cooking time. Boneless types of chicken will cook up quicker than bone in chicken, and you do not want it to dry out.
Grilling this recipe works for all kinds of flavors, and adds another layer of flavor – so if you are looking for a great grill recipe, this one works.
We suggest topping it with green onions below as our preferred garnish, but diced cilantro is also good if you prefer.

Ingredients Needed to Make Soy Sauce Chicken:

Yield: 8 chicken thighs

Ingredients

2 lb chicken thighs, about 8 medium-size thighs

Marinade:

¾ c soy sauce
¼ c vegetable oil
¼ c light brown sugar
8-10 garlic cloves, lightly smashed (so they won’t burn while baking in the oven)
¼ tsp cayenne pepper, or more if you want your chicken more spicy

Garnish, optional:

Green onion, chopped

How to make this soy sauce chicken recipe:

Here are the instructions on how to make the marinade and then full recipe. You can even make this marinade a day ahead if you want to cook for a crowd, and marinate it early – to make cooking time easier.

Start with this easy marinade then move on to the rest.

In a mixing bowl, combine all marinade ingredients (except garlic) and mix until sugar dissolved completely.

Add chicken thighs and smashed garlic to marinade mixture.

Mix and toss everything evenly to combine.
Let the chicken marinade, in the fridge, for at least 6 hours or overnight.
When you’re ready to cook, pre heat oven to 350F.

Remove chicken thighs and garlic from the marinade and arrange them, skin side up, on a baking sheet that is lined with aluminum foil. Discard marinade mixture, do not reuse.

Bake until chicken thighs turn golden brown evenly and the skins start curling up a little bit. Approximately 45 to 50 minutes. If you use large chicken thighs, it can take about 1 hour.
Serve hot immediately, garnish with green onion if desired.

Check out this summer grilled chicken marinade, for another healthy and tasty chicken marinade sauce.