I’ve gotten a little lax with my grocery spending lately, so during the month of June I’m making it my mission to use up as many things in my pantry and freezer as possible. First up: chicken thighs! I fell in love with chicken thighs when I made the Maple Dijon Chicken because they are just so easy to prepare and come out so wonderfully juicy. All you really need to do is slather on a sauce and bake.
So, that’s what I did. I whipped up a quick pineapple teriyaki sauce (again using pantry staples), poured it over the chicken and let it bake. I served it over some brown jasmine rice, topped it with some left over sliced green onions, and a side of some frozen broccoli florets (ALSO leftovers from the freezer). All I bought for this recipe was the pineapple. That makes me HAPPY. …and I’m sure I’ll be happy munching on this for lunch tomorrow at work!
P.S. I made four chicken thighs because that’s what I had in my freezer, but this amount of sauce could probably handle up to 6 smallish thighs without needing to make more.
Baked Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken Thighs
Baked Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken Thighs
Servings 4Ingredients
- 15 oz can pineapple chunks in juice ($1.29)
- 1 inch fresh ginger, grated ($0.11)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.16)
- 1/4 cup soy sauce ($0.40)
- 1 1/2 Tbsp rice vinegar ($0.17)
- 2 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.03)
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch ($0.04)
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 1 1/4 lbs) ($2.35)
- 3 whole green onions, sliced ($0.33)
- 4 cups cooked rice ($0.69)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Drain the pineapple juice from the can to use in the sauce (it should be about 3/4 cup juice total). Save the pineapple chunks for later. Combine the pineapple juice, grated ginger, minced garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar, and cornstarch in a small sauce pot. Stir until everything is well combined and the cornstarch is dissolved. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it begins to boil and becomes thick and glossy. Turn the burner off and add the pineapple chunks to the sauce.
- Coat a small casserole dish with non-stick spray. Arrange the chicken thighs in the dish so that they are not overlapping. Pour the pineapple teriyaki sauce over the chicken, allowing some to get under the chicken pieces.
- Bake the chicken in the preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Top the chicken with the sliced green onions. To serve, scoop one chicken thigh plus pineapple pieces and sauce over a bowl of cooked rice.
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Nutrition
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Step by Step Photos
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, then begin to make the sauce. Pour off the juice from one 15-oz. can of pineapple chunks in juice. You should have about 3/4 cup juice (if you have less, say 1/2 cup, you’ll still be okay).
Combine that pineapple juice in a small sauce pot with 1 inch of freshly grated ginger, 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup soy sauce 1.5 Tbsp rice vinegar, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, and 1 Tbsp cornstarch. Stir until all of the corn starch is dissolved. it will look kind of cloudy, like this.
Cook the sauce over medium heat until it begins to boil, at which point it will become thick and glossy (that’s the magic of corn starch!). This only takes about five minutes. Turn the heat off and stir in the pineapple chunks.
Place the chicken thighs in a casserole dish so that they are not overlapping. You want them to have a little bit of space, so if you’re cooking more than just four, use a larger dish. I don’t bother trimming the fat because it mostly melts off and it tastes good. Yes, I said it. Chicken fat tastes good!
Pour the yummy sauce all over ’em. I lifted up the chicken a bit to let some of the sauce get underneath…
Then just cook it in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked all the way through and the sauce is nice and bubbly. DONE!
Sprinkle some sliced green onions on top and you’re ready to serve!
I served mine with some brown rice and leftover frozen broccoli florets. I had plenty of sauce to spoon over the rice and broccoli for a FANTASTIC meal. So easy!
This dish is excellent! Even my one year old thought so! It’s a keeper for sure.
This dish is absolutely delicious!!!!!! Super easy to make too!! I added white sushi rice and brussel sprouts instead for the sides and then garnished it with the green onions, my fiance was so amazed! He was like “this looks delicious and professional!!” I think he was impressed! Thank you for this recipe! <3
Number one, I have been on your blog all afternoon looking at recipes. Everything looks so delicious and I’m so glad to have found your site! I adapted the sauce in this recipe tonight to drizzle over rice, broccoli, and baked chicken. Because I didn’t have any pineapple on hand, I substituted it with mandarin oranges and it turned out absolutely incredible. Thank you!!
Made this tonight, was bloody lovely! I used the same quantity as the recipe and used it on 5 chicken thighs and a separate dish for some over Quorn fillets. It was just so yummy and I love the fact that it looked like the photos! Well, mine was darker and think perhaps because I used dark soy sauce, and I had no green onions to top it with so chopped some fresh mint (mint and pineapple is delish).
LOVE your site :-)
I made this for my omnivore boyfriend last night. He thought it needed some spice, and that thought did cross my mind as I was making it before he mentioned it. I would add red pepper flakes to the sauce next time. He said it was “good”, which is great since he’s notoriously picky. The simplicity of this was awesome.
Made this with chicken breasts and Followed this recipe exactly. Came out watery so disappointing!
Then you didn’t follow the recipe exactly ;)
This was a HUGE hit with my family. I used bone-in thighs, and the meat just fell right off the bones.
Hey, Beth!
I tried this recipe, and YUM! I also did a review of Budget Bytes, and it’s up now!
http://notastepfordlife.blogspot.ca/2014/06/budget-bytes-nom-nom-nom.html
Thanks for the great write up!
Thank you so much for this recipe! I had all the ingredients on hand (except for the chicken) and it was SO good that I made it twice in a row. Now I’m on my own and have enough leftovers for a few days. Thanks for such a tasty and easy recipe.
So could I make up the pineapple teriyaki sauce in the morning and leave it refrigerated for the husband to assemble in the evening? Or would it just coagulate too soon?
I would suggest assembling the sauce, but not cooking it. If you cook it and then refrigerate, it will get very thick and might not be pourable over the chicken. It only takes a few minutes on the heat to cook and thicken, so hopefully your husband can handle that step as well. :)
Hey Beth,
First off, let me say that I’m a big fan of your website! I tried this recipe just today and followed your instructions to a tee with only one exception (I used chicken breasts instead of thighs). I’m eating it now and it’s tasty but I feel like all I can taste is the rice vinegar for some reason. Do you think if I omitted the rice vinegar entirely for next time that would totally ruin the sauce?
If you’re sensitive to that flavor, you might not have a problem omitting it. :) Personally, I feel like it needs that acid to balance out the sweet and salty. You could even try reducing it by half to see if that helps.
WOW!! I made these with chicken breast tenders and I usually hate baking breast because they always end up dry. My breasts in this recipe were SO MOIST. Love, love love. Also, who doesn’t like pineapple?! This meal was so perfect. Thank you!
This was totally worth turning on the oven for–thanks, Beth!
Hi… I like almost all ur recipes.each one of them looks like a million bucks.r u on you tube?? If u r not u should be.trust me ur preparations r really nice&delicious.
Also is there a vegetarian (non meat) version to this?? M vegetarian!! Thanks
Hi Beth, I like your teriyaki sauce recipe and I love pineapples so this recipe seems perfect to me. Thank you!
I’ve got one question. I see you used canned pineapple juice to add in the sauce instead of water as usual. Now where I’m living, it’s cheaper to buy fresh pineapples than canned ones and that’s what I intend to do. So if I use fresh pineapple, should I sauté the chunks to get some juice out? (I’m aware that I won’t get much juice this way though.) Or should I juice some chunks? Thanks.
You know, I’ll be honest, I don’t think the pineapple juice added that much to the sauce, so if I were you, I’d just add some fresh pineapple to the dish like I did with the canned, but use water for the sauce and add a little extra brown sugar to make up for the loss from the juice. I think I might even like my regular non-juice teriyaki a little better. I loved the pineapple chunks in the dish, though.