This Chicken Chashu is rolled into a roulade making it easy to slice into beautiful rounds to top your favorite ramen recipe. It also make for a great side to a bowl of hot rice, or other Asian noodle soups.
Chashu is the Japanese version of Chinese Char Siu. Unlike its grilled Chinese counterpart, the Japanese version is typically made by rolling pork belly into a log and braising it until tender. It’s then unbound and sliced before being used to garnish bowls of ramen. When served on hot rice, or over a bowl of steaming noodle soup, the fat in the pork melts, making the meat literally fall apart in your mouth. It’s a sublime experience that 20% of the world’s population can’t experience because of their religion.
Recently I was working on creating a recipe for chicken ramen for those that can’t eat pork and decided it needed a chicken version of chashu to finish it off. It started out as a garnish for the ramen, but it was so good I ended up having most of it on rice and in sandwiches. This recipe makes two good size logs, so make it on a weekend and slice it up and enjoy it during the busy workweek.
The first challenge in making chashu from chicken was the shape. Pork belly is relatively flat and rolls up nicely, but how do you get chicken to look round. Sure you could roll and tie it, but as the separate pieces of meat cooked I was pretty sure it would lose it’s shape. To solve this, I wrapped the whole roll in a few layers of foil before tying it with twine. This not only gives it a great cylindrical shape, it holds much of the juice in, helping to keep it moist.
Since pork belly is loaded with fat, you can cook it until it’s fall apart tender without rendering out all the fat and making it dry. This presented the second challenge. How do you cook leaner chicken until tender while retaining the collagen and fat that make it moist. For this I took inspiration from a terrine, and steamed it instead of braising it. I also used skin on chicken thigh and wrapped it around leaner strips of breast meat (a.k.a. chicken tenders) to create a contrast of textures and colors to mimic pork belly.
The last quandry was that of flavor. Since my chicken was now going to be wrapped tightly in foil and steamed it didn’t leave a lot of opportunity to season the chicken while cooking. That’s why I decided to marinate the chicken in advance. This not only ensures the chicken is evenly seasoned, it reduces the water content of the chicken which concentrates its flavor and firms up the texture of the meat.
Units
Ingredients
- 1.14 kilograms boneless skin-on chicken thighs
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons sake
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons fresh ginger (grated)
- ground white pepper
- 4 small chicken tenders
Instructions
- Put the soy sauce, sake, sugar and ginger in a large Ziploc bag and mix together. Add the chicken thighs and make sure each piece is coated with the marinade. Press as much air out of the bag as possible, then seal and refrigerate overnight.
- The next day, tear off a 3 foot long sheet of aluminum foil with the shiny side up. Lay half the marinated chicken thighs on the foil, skin-side down, to form a rectangle about 6 inches wide. Sprinkle the chicken generously with white pepper. Lay two chicken tenders on the chicken thighs. Since tenders taper on one end, you want to lay them facing in opposite directions so you end up with a core of chicken tenders that is roughly the same thickness of both ends.
- Tightly roll the chicken being careful not to sandwich the foil between the layers of chicken. When the chicken portion is rolled, continue rolling with the rest of the foil to form a tight cylinder. Twist both ends of the foil shut.
- Cut an 8 foot length of twine, fold the twine in half, then tuck the midpoint under one end of the roll. Bring both ends of the twine up either side of the roll, cris-cross the twine, then flip the roll over and bring it back around. Repeat until you've reached the other end of the roll, then tie the twine in a knot. The twine should look like a laced shoe on either side. Make a second roll using the rest of the chicken.
- Bring a steamer to a boil, then add the rolled chicken. Cover with a lid and steam for 1 hour. When it's done, remove the chicken from the steamer and allow it to cool. Place the roll in the refrigerator overnight to let the collagen set.
- When your chicken chashu is ready, unwrap it, slice it and put it on a bowl of chicken ramen, or have it on top of rice as a donburi.
TSF says
Great recipe, but it is only gluten free if the soy sauce and sake are gluten free versions. Someone who is gluten free would find that obvious but most people are blissfully unaware of that and may be cooking for a gluten free person.
Maria White says
Do you think that the people who want crisp skin can use a culinary torch to make the skin crisp? As long as you use it just above the skin, you should just hit crispy, right? I haven’t tried it since all I have in the house is skinless frozen chunks of chicken. This way it doesn’t dry out the meat, though you would loose some of the gel I’m guessing.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Maria, the skin is too moist to crisp with a torch. it will end up burning before it crisps. Also, an ordinary kitchen torch is going to be way too hot crisp the skin even if it were drier. I’d say the only way you might be able to get the skin crisp is to scrape off all the gelatin, dry it with paper towels and then deep fry the whole thing, but this is probably going to make a huge mess (the oil is going to bubble up a ton, so use a very large pot so it doesn’t boil over), and the chicken is going to be tougher.
Andreas Asen says
hey marc thx for the great recipes , 1 question though in my area there is no sake , is there a more general subtitute ?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Andreas, unfortunately, sake has a unique flavor that’s not really substitutable. Water would probably be your best bet.
Herr Yamamoto says
Could i marinade the chicken for 2 days?
Herr Yamamoto says
Thanks for your reply, how about deepfreeze the rest for next time?
Marc Matsumoto says
If you’re going to freeze it you may want to steam it first and then freeze it, as you’re going to lose a ton of water when you defrost the marinated chicken.
Herr Yamamoto says
yeah of course, this was how i planned it 🙂 …well i see now i tied it very tight, but didn’t chris cross the twine, hope it works out anyway
Sadia says
i cant find boneless chicken thigh with skin in England can i use it without skin will it work?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Sadia, it will work from a taste perspective, but without the gelatin from the skin I can’t guarantee it will hold it’s shape when you slice it.
Tom Windwllow says
Bone the thigh. Very easy with boning or paring knife. Slide the knif carefully down the femur on both sides then use your fingers to tease the bone from the meat.
Krishna says
Hi, I was wondering if its possible to substitute sake with mirin?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Krishna, a couple things with mirin. First, most mirin sold outside Japan is fake (or at least not very high quality). If the ingredient label shows anything other than water, rice, and koji, it is not real mirin. That’s why I don’t usually use mirin in my recipes. The second thing is that it is much sweeter than sake, so you do decide to use mirin instead of sake, you probably won’t need to add any sugar. The last thing is that if you are able to find real mirin, it has a similar flavor profile to sake, but it’s much more concentrated, so you may find the taste overwhelms the chicken.
Giftz says
I cannot consume alcohol for religious reasons. 🙁