Although it only takes about five minutes of active effort, the resulting chicken is tender and coated in a beautiful glossy sauce that’s tangy, sweet, and loaded with umami. When prepared with chicken wings, it makes for a fun game-day or movie-night finger food, but it can also be served as an entree or packed into a bento box lunch.
Why This Recipe Works?
By seasoning this dish with umeboshi, you get the salt, acidity, and fruity flavors from the ume requiring very few other ingredients. Using mirin as the braising liquid adds umami and a balancing sweetness to the dish. After the chicken is done, the braising liquid is reduced to make a thick sauce used to glaze the chicken.
Ingredients for Umeboshi Chicken
Umeboshi - I used umeboshi that was made with 5% salt. If you use full salt (20%) umeboshi, you will need to halve the amount and skip the soy sauce. Chicken - I used chicken drummettes, the base of chicken wings (wingettes being the tips). You can use either cut, and chicken thighs will work as well. I’d recommend avoiding breast meat for this, as the long cooking time will render it tough and dry. Mirin - Mirin is made by fermenting whole grain mochi rice with koji, which degrades the starch into sugar. Then alcohol is added to aid preservation before it is aged for anywhere from a few months to a decade or more. Its purpose for this dish is to serve as a braising liquid while adding sweetness and umami. Unfortunately, it is challenging to find real mirin outside of Japan (real mirin should not contain anything other than rice, water, koji, and alcohol). If you can’t find it, you’re better off using a mixture of ½ cup sake and ¼ cup light brown sugar than using the fake stuff (which usually just alcohol and corn syrup mixed with MSG and salt). Konbu - Konbu is a type of dried kelp that is a rich source of natural glutamate. This is an amino acid that’s responsible for the taste of umami. The glutamate in the konbu and mirin synergizes with the chicken’s nucleic acids to give this dish a ton of umami. Usukuchi Soy Sauce - This is optional and whether you need it or not depends on how salty your umeboshi is.
How to Make Umeboshi Chicken
Arrange the konbu, umeboshi, and chicken in a non-reactive heavy-bottomed pot like an enameled dutch oven. Pour the mirin over everything. You want to minimize the amount of space between the food so that they’re as submerged as possible in the liquid (the ones on top won’t be fully submerged). Cover the pot with a lid and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Turn down the heat as low as possible and braise the chicken undisturbed for twenty minutes. When the time is up, open it up and give the braising liquid a taste. If it’s already well seasoned, you can skip the soy sauce. Otherwise, go ahead and add the soy sauce. Rearrange the chicken, so any pieces that were not cooking in the liquid are now submerged. Continue cooking the chicken for another ten minutes or until the wings are tender. If you start running out of liquid, you can add some water to keep things from burning. Once the chicken is tender, remove it from the pot and turn up the heat to reduce the braising liquid into a glaze with the consistency of maple syrup. Add the chicken back to the pot and toss everything together to coat each piece with the glaze.
Other Ume Recipes
Ume Juice Onigiri
📖 Recipe
