Mochiko chicken is a delicious Hawaiian dish that has Japanese roots. Mochiko means rice flour in Japanese and is a main ingredient in the breading.
Sweet rice flour is accompanied with other asian ingredients like soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil and aromatics like garlic and green onion to create a flavorful marinade that also serves as a frying batter for the chicken. Chicken is marinated for up to 24 hours in this fragrant concoction and then fried.
Very different from your regular fried chicken it has an exotic savory and sweet flavor and chewier but still crispy texture. You can find mochiko chicken wings all over Hawaii but I am using boneless pieces of tender chicken thighs in this recipe. But you can really choose whatever suits your personal palette.
To make mochiko chicken is very easy. Unlike the American fried chicken where marinating, dredging in flour and eggs and breading is done separately, here we just simply mix all of the ingredients together, coat the chicken in this batter, marinate and then fry.
It does result in a very different breading texture, but the dominant asian flavors are spot on. Chicken itself is moist and tender thanks to the process of marinating it. It tastes amazing and is very simple to make.
Follow the steps below to make Hawaiian famous Mochiko chicken.
