I saw this recipe for Sriracha Chicken Strips one day while stumbling around on the internet and, being the Sriracha lover that I am, I immediately bookmarked it for later use. Jenny’s Idea for marinading chicken in Sriracha is absolute genius. The vinegar in the Sriracha and the little bit added to the marinade tenderizes the chicken as it sits so you end up with a super moist and tender chicken strip after cooking. The other reason that I wanted to try these is because back when I made Coconut Chicken Strips I wondered if they would work baked instead of pan fried and this recipe does just that. The result? VERY crunchy on the outside and super moist on the inside. Success!
These chicken strips are super spicy so if you’ve got a bad case of GERD, maybe try the Coconut Chicken Strips instead. I made some sauteed bok choy and Garlic Noodles to serve with the spicy chicken strips and they balanced the heat perfectly. What a meal!
I made a couple of minute changes to the original recipe like using fresh ginger and garlic in the marinade and adding a flour dredge step to the breading process.
Sriracha Chicken Strips
Servings 4Ingredients
- 1.5 lbs about 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts ($2.98)
- 1/3 cup sriracha hot sauce ($0.49)
- 1 Tbsp rice vinegar ($0.05)
- 1 inch peeled and grated ginger ($0.11)
- 1 clove garlic, minced ($0.06)
- 1 large egg ($0.12)
- 1 cup all-purpose flour ($0.04)
- 1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs ($0.65)
- a pinch each salt and pepper ($0.05)
Instructions
- In a resealable container combine the Sriracha, rice vinegar, minced garlic and grated ginger. Slice the chicken breasts diagonally into 6 strips each and mix to coat in the Sriracha marinade. Cover the container with the marinade and chicken and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Set up your dredging station by getting three bowls. Fill the first with the all-purpose flour, in the second whisk the egg and 1 Tbsp of water and in the third bowl place the panko bread crumbs. Also get a clean plate or dish ready to hold the breaded chicken strips.
- Taking one chicken strip from the marinade at a time, wipe off the excess Sriracha then dip to coat in the flour, then the egg and lastly the panko crumbs. Make sure all surfaces of the chicken strip get covered with each. Gently place the breaded strip on the clean plate and move on to the next one. This is messy and your hands will get coated so make sure you won’t get interrupted before you begin.
- Once all of the strips are breaded, place them on a baking sheet lined with foil and bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. After 20 minutes, turn the oven on to broil and broil for about 5 minutes on each side. Watch the strips during the broiling process. When they get golden brown, pull them out, flip them and wait for the second side to get golden (about 5 minutes each side). Let the strips cool slightly before serving!
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Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!Step By Step Photos
Here is the simple marinade, just four ingredients. Sriracha sauce is so common now you can find it at almost any grocery store (bottle on the left, aka “rooster sauce”).
Slice the chicken breasts on a diagonal into 6 strips each. Mix the sliced chicken into the marinade and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Here is the breading station. I have the marinaded chicken on the left, three bowls, each with one of the breading layers (flour, egg, panko) and a clean dish to set the finished strips on. Preheat your oven to 400 before breading and it will probably be ready to go by the time you’re finished.
Here are the breaded chicken strips before baking. The panko is barely holding on there so don’t handle them a whole lot before baking them. Transfer them to a baking sheet and cook for 20 minutes at 400 then broil for 5 minutes on each side (this will firm up the bottom which can get soggy).
I served my chicken strips with sauteed bok choy and garlic noodles. PERFECT!
will try it out
Too gingery, wasn’t a fan. Followed the recipe to the tee
Sorry to hear that Jay. You could definitely half the amount if you decide to make it again.
yummy
I’m making the Sriracha Chicken Strips for dinner this week, along with the Garlic Noodles. I have a question about baking the chicken strips. Did you bake them on a wired rack, or did you cook the strips on the cookie sheet that’s heavily greased? Thank you, Beth!! :-)
Unfortunately this recipe was so long ago that I don’t remember, but I think either would work. If you don’t use a wire rack, just make sure to flip them so that both sides get good color. :)
Hi Beth,
After a few different recipes this month called for it, my husband and I finally realized that rice vinegar is the source of sweetness we keep identifying that we don’t really care for. What would you recommend as a good substitute or change to recipes if we aren’t a fan of the sweet undertone?
Interesting! I wouldn’t have considered rice vinegar even the least bit sweet. :) Maybe try subbing a more intense vinegar, like white or apple cider to see if it works better for you. Personally, I think some type of vinegar is necessary to balance the flavors, but maybe try just leaving it out. You could try rice wine. I would consider that to be the ingredient with a sweet undertone, but maybe our taste buds are just really different! :D
I came across this comment three years too late, but seasoned rice vinegar is seasoned with sugar. This type of vinegar is used to make sticky sushi rice. However, plain unseasoned rice vinegar should not add any sweetness. Both types are readily available in most grocery stores.
These were really crispy/flavorful. I skipped the “wipe off excess Sriracha” step, as that seemed blasphemous. Everything still held together nicely. I also used a wire rack and that worked out perfectly. I paired the chicken with an Asian broccoli slaw, and once I started eating the two, realized that my meal was begging to become a taco. So I whipped out a tortilla and combined the chicken and slaw– it was great! Next time I’ll probably do the same but add a sauce to the taco, a tangy or spicy mayo. Thanks for another great recipe. Browser isn’t letting me select 5 stars >:o
Hahaha, I firmy believe that everything tastes better stuffed into a tortilla. ;)
Making these for lunch and then going to make the Italian Wonderpot recipe for dinner! :) (with shrimp added near the end)
The only change I made to this recipe, is I added a tiny bit of honey to the Sriracha sauce. Just one small squeeze of it, and mixed well
Can sriracha be substituted for any hotsauce or is it totally vital here? I have hot sauce from my work — a taco place called Moe’s — and I want to know if i could use that instead.
Sriracha definitely has a unique flavor. That being said, you could use a different hot sauce and the chicken strips will just be flavored like that sauce instead of Sriracha. :) Oh, and you might not need that rice vinegar because some other hot sauces (like tabasco style) tend to have more vinegar than Sriracha.
Just made this tonight with the Bok Choy and Garlic Noodles for my wife and kids. Everyone loved it! I wasn’t able to turn the chicken as it was stuck to the foil, so they weren’t as pretty as Beth’s but still tasted great. Love love love your site Beth!!
Easy and delicious – which happen to be my two major requirements for any recipe. Kudos to Anonymous up there for the cooling rack baking suggestion – worked like a charm. Came out nice and crunchy with no broiling. (Hooray for eliminating a step!) Definitely adding these to the regular rotation.
I just made these and they were awesome! I thought there was a good amount of flavor but I could go even spicier. I only marinated my chicken strips for an hour, marinating longer should give them more flavor, right?
I ate these with ramen tonight because it’s late and I got lazy, but when I have the leftovers, I’ll make some rice and veggies to go with. Yum!
Just had these for dinner. They are the bomb!! Family loved them. I brown my panko in the oven before breading, so they have a nice “browned” color. Cooked them for 30 min, with no broiler. Perfect!
I made these one day and they were amazing! I actually added a 4th station to the dredging station and used up a little dry ranch mix! It was so good!
Anonymous – It’s hard to say, but I would try wiping off more of the marinade before breading the chicken strips and try coating the foil with a good dose of non-stick spray.
I’ve made this recipe dozens of times (because it’s delicious), but what always happens is that my breading sticks in little pieces to the foil and parts of it come off. My chicken looks like it has bald spots. What am I doing wrong?
Good recipe, I loved it!
Do you like squash? I found a recipe for butternut squash fries with sriracha and i thought of you since you use that sauce often and your site is really what introduced me to sriracha sauce. You should try them if you like squash.And i seriously need to try these chicken tenders soon, I love anything with sriracha and I love every recipe I’ve tried from your site. :)
Not a stupid question :) Although I haven’t tried marinating them that long, I think it should be fine.
this might sound like a weird question…but these can be marinated longer than 4 hours right? i can marinate them the night before?
thanks :)
Red wine vinegar might be too strong for this. Rice vinegar is neutral and very light.
Can you use Red Wine vinegar with the marinade?
I just made this and it was fantastic! The one tip i’d like to give is to cook the strips on a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet. This helps them to not be soggy (they turned out PERFECTLY crispy!)
thanks for the recipe!
also the broiling made my smoke detector go off, but I blame myself for that one.
I made this last week, and the chicken was delicious! The marinade flavors nicely compliment each other. My boyfriend loved this too, and since he loves dips, I made a simple dipping sauce mixing ketchup and sriracha for the chicken. I served this with blanched asparagus and green beans.
just came across your blog and love it very much!
Was ecstatic to see this receipe since I pretty much live off Sriracha. *(I found that it is a great salad dressing substitute!) -However I was disappointed in the outcome. Not only was lack of heat, but complete lack of flavor. (Which I’m surprised, since I marinated the strips overnight). I ended up having to drizzel the baked chicken strips in Sriracha for some taste.
I’ll have to play around with this.
For Love of Sriracha – join the Facebook page today!!!
We loved these, but should have watched them more closely. Next time we want to try the same preparation with zucchini slices. Marinading in sriracha was a great idea!
In this past week I’ve tried both this recipe and the coconut chicken recipe and loved them both. I changed this one up a little bit because, 1. i love coconut and 2 the coconut chicken called for less flour. I did the dredging from the coconut chicken for this recipe and marinated already cooked Tyson chicken breasts for a day. Its soo yummmy!!! Thank you!
This Recipe was amazing. Thank you for this!
Yep, you can uses regular bread crumbs. They’ll just have a heavier texture than the panko.
Can I use regular bread crumbs? I have a full thing in my cupboard thats why… and also what do you think about ginger that is in the tube you buy in the fresh produce isle?
I have lost track of the days, since leftovers made for repeat dinners lol
I am gonna say day#10 since I will be going shopping on Saturday.
Ok, for the review. Quote from the hubby ‘This is the best thing yet!’ Yeah, from the fussy eater, who always whined about leftovers. He took the rest for his lunch.
Spicy, but not crazily so. They practically explode with flavour on contact though. My mouth was watering just from the marinade. I had no problem with the cooking time (30mins total, with 5/5 of that on broil for each side), but I left them to marinate for 4 hours, so there was no chance of them getting dry :-)Used the Thai chili dipping sauce, that I had leftover from the coconut chicken.
Paired it with the Jalapeno bacon cheesy stuffed potatoes of awesomeness!! That is there new name lol.
SIDENOTE: We have decreased our grocery bill by 245$ to 105$ from the usual 350$. Yeah thats right, to anyone who reads this, If you like her recipes, shop with a grocery list of the ingredients, I kept expecting to run out of food at the end of the week and I still havent yet, as well as I have not thrown out one single container of leftovers, since they are getting taken to lunch or had for the next days dinner. They are THAT good.
Sorry for the novel, but Beth, you have started a very good thing here <3
These were so good the first time we made them, we are making them again tonight!
This is great idea- I can’t wait to try them!
Great blog, by the way! Very useful for those of us a little strapped for cash!
I tried these a few weeks ago – delicious! They were quite spicy – keep a glass of milk nearby! =)
I’ve experimented a bit more with your recipe, and I think I have narrowed down why my chicken was coming out so dry. If you add some oil to the marinade, say a couple of tablespoons, the chicken comes out perfectly moist!
If you don’t want to go through the work of breading these suckers, they are great on the grill as well!
I found your blog via an article in February’s Popular Science. Made these tonight. DELICIOUS. Thank you : D
These were great – also made the garlic noodles, and will again!
Yes, I buy chicken in 5 lb. packs. I save at least $1.50 per pound by buying the larger pack. If you buy one or two pounds at a time the price is outrageous! When I get the pack home, I just split it up into freezer bags with 2 breasts per bag so I can take out the amount I need later to thaw. Just remember to label the bags with the date and item and of course remember that you have the chicken in the freezer to use! It’s nice later on to have the meat already there so you barely have to spend/buy anything to make a meal!
These look really great! I really enjoy looking through your blog and seeing what you come up with; I’m not really a cook, but you explain things really well and inspire me to try more things (and escape from the prepared dinners section of the grocery store!).
I do have a question – is $2/lb a standard price for boneless chicken breasts in your area, or are you buying in bulk? I’ve never seen boneless chicken breasts in the regular stores near me for less than $5.99/lb, but I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right stores, or if that’s living-in-Los-Angeles surcharge.
This looks like a quick and easy recipe. I will definitely give it a try. I just hope it will turn out good so I can also post it in my blog. Thanks for sharing!
i love your blog! i will be making these soon because i love love love sriracha! it tastes good on bratwursts, on pizza, and even hamburgers :)
I made these last night, and while they were pretty great, I had a couple of things I will do differently next time. (Because oh yes, I will be making them again.)
I had a problem with the strips sticking to my foil. I will definitely use non-stick spray on the foil next time.
The cooking time seemed to be a little too extensive for having strips of chicken. While they did turn out crispy, they also turned out rather dry. I may cut the bake time in about half next time around.
Thanks for the recipe!
Hi there! I found this recipe/blog via foodgawker last week. I just wanted to let you know that I made these tonight, along with your garlic noodles, and they both were fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing and I will be back again. ;)
oh, sorry! I meant to write that into the recipe but I forgot. Sriracha is a Thai hot sauce… it’s great on everything and you can get it at almost any store now (in the asian food section). Here is a wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce
Sriracha is Vietnamese :)
Ah, so embarrassing! I knew that :( I can’t even go back and correct that comment because it was made back on the old platform. Well, I appreciate you letting me know about the mistake anyway! :)
These look so good! Please forgive my ignorance, but what is Sriracha?
Thanks
jessyburke88@gmail.com
Marinating in Siracha IS genius! These sound amazing.
By the way, your blog is amazing. I have a lot of your recipes bookmarked and I know that this is going to be very useful for me when I move into my apartment and have to start cooking on my own!
We LOVE Siracha at our house and it’s perfect with chicken!
These look great and spicy just how I like things!
ah yes, I love putting additives in ramen! check out my Quick Ramen Bowls!
Delightful! I actually made chicken strips with a panko and pecan breading that I dipped in sriracha earlier this week– this looks much more efficient and uniformly spiced! Sriracha is one of my favorite accompaniments ever. I admit, I now and again have some ramen, and you haven’t known the possibilities of those little packages until you’ve tossed in some scallions and sriracha. Perfect anti-cold comfort food.