I frequently eat this at our neighborhood Chinese restaurants, so I reproduced it at home and improved the flavor. These take a lot of time, and I advise using oil in the deep fryer that has already been changed because the marinade will destroy it for other types of cooking. I’ve used this method successfully with squid as well. Green peppers and an onion that I had finely sliced were also added to the marinade, and it turned out really well.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 3 hrs |
| Total Time: | 4 hrs |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 12 servings |
Ingredients
- ½ cup teriyaki sauce
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 (1 inch) piece fresh ginger, grated
- ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut into bite-size pieces
- 30 4×4-inch squares aluminum foil, or as needed
- oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Mix the teriyaki sauce, garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes in a bowl; stir in the chicken pieces until thoroughly coated.
- Cover the bowl and refrigerate the chicken 3 to 4 hours to overnight.
- Remove a piece of chicken from the marinade and place into the center of an aluminum square.
- Fold the square diagonally over the chicken piece in a triangle shape; fold up the open edges of the triangle several times and press tightly together to seal the chicken into the foil. Repeat with remaining chicken pieces. Discard the used marinade.
- Heat oil in a deep-fryer or large saucepan to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Gently add the sealed foil packets to the hot oil and fry until the chicken is tender and cooked through, 2 to 4 minutes. Drain the packets on paper towels and allow to cool slightly.
- To serve, tear open the packets along the sealed edges.
- The nutrition data for this recipe includes the full amount of the marinade ingredients. The actual amount of the marinade consumed will vary.
- I would wait until you are ready to change your oil in your deep fryer before making this recipe, as it tends to ruin the oil for anything else.
Reviews
just finished testing it. I cooked them in the oven rather than the oil. 350 degrees for 30 minutes. But my chicken breasts were still partially frozen. I also used cream sherry instead of wine. I’ve never made better more moist tender chicken than this. See my two photos above. When you make this in the oven you can tell they’re done by the way the foil packets crackle when you take them out. I used sesame oil in the marinade, so that was the only oil involved.
loved this recipes will use every time we have chinnese nite definatly worth the time
I can’t eat anything fried right now, but the flavors seemed so good, I wanted to see if I couldn’t adapt this into something I can eat. I followed the recipe as written until the step where the chicken is wrapped in foil. Here I substituted parchment paper, putting 4 pieces of chicken on each square and a drizzle of the marinade and a few slices of scallion. I folded my packets and I baked them, on a rack in a shallow pan at 375F for about 20 minutes. 15 minutes would likely have been long enough, but we enjoyed the flavor and texture of the chicken.
As everyone stated it was a little time consuming but the outcome was great. I made my own teriyaki marinade but paired the chicken with spinach and vegetable rice. It was even better the second time since it was dinner last night and lunch today. Thanks for sharing!
I wasn’t sure how this was going to come out, but it was amazing! I followed the recipe exactly as stated (I made my own teriyaki for the marinade). I did add two pieces of chicken per package, used heavy duty foil, and crimped and sealed them VERY tightly. They were perfectly cooked in 4 minutes. I didn’t have a problem with smoking at all. The chicken was very moist and tender. I laid out (on a large platter) the chicken packages, lettuce leaves, grated carrot and scallion and let everyone make lettuce wraps. This does take a little time (wrapping the foil packs) so I enlisted the help of my husband. Fabulous chicken!
I made these for lunch today and my family loved them! I increased the red pepper flakes in half and left out the pepper flakes in the other half for the kids. My kids are super picky and they ate every one I made, even the ones with the extra spice! I served with simple fried rice and it was perfect.
I wrote the recipe…if you were to cook these in water, the marinade will leak out…if you cook these in water, you will wind up with watered down chicken. These are called paper-wrapped because the original recipe for these were done in parchment paper and they were folded elaborately into envelopes. This is a traditional Asian dish as far the technique goes, I’ve changed the marinade up.
Like it a lot. Easy and delicious. Made some more of the marinade, added some sesame oil and rice vinegar and used as a dressing for a simple Eastern salad. Thanks for the recipe.