This Classic Chicken Teriyaki recipe from the January 2012 issue of Food and Wine is light, tasty and doesn’t take long to make. Chicken breasts and peppers are sautéed and then topped with teriyaki sauce made from scratch—much better than the store-bought version. To make the chicken breasts thinner, cover them with plastic wrap and pound with a meat tenderizer mallet or cast iron frying pan. This does a good job on the chicken and is an excellent way to vent the day’s frustrations. I served the chicken and peppers with steamed rice and sautéed baby bok choy.

Avoiding Additives and Preservatives

The ingredients in this recipe that may contain additives and preservatives are the broth, mirin (rice wine vinegar) and soy sauce. I used Imagine brand chicken stock, which is all-natural. Mirin and soy sauce can contain sodium benzoate, so look for tamari instead of soy sauce and a brand of mirin that uses alcohol as a preservative. I used Kikkoman brand aji-mirin.

I used a red pepper and hot banana pepper

Pound chicken breasts and saute until cooked through

Saute peppers until they start to brown

Slice the chicken and serve with the peppers and teriyaki sauce

Ingredients:

1 cup chicken stock or low-sodium broth

1/3 cup sugar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons canola oil

Steamed short-grain rice, for serving

Four 6-ounce skinless, boneless chicken breasts, lightly pounded

2 tablespoons mirin

1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons sake

2 large Italian frying peppers, cut into ½-inch strips

Preparation:

In a medium saucepan, combine the chicken stock with the soy sauce, sugar, mirin and sake and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat to moderate and simmer until the teriyaki sauce is reduced to 1/2 cup and syrupy, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, season the chicken with salt and pepper. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil. Add the chicken and cook over moderately high heat, turning once, until browned all over and cooked through, 8 to 9 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate and let stand for 5 minutes.

Wipe out the skillet. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil and heat until shimmering.

Add the pepper strips and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender and lightly charred, about 3 minutes. Transfer the peppers to plates. Slice the chicken breasts crosswise and transfer to the plates. Drizzle the sauce over the chicken and serve with rice. Serves 4.

From the January 2012 issue of Food and Wine