This Easy Sesame Chicken recipe is seriously so easy that you’ll be tempted to toss those take-out menus. The deliciously sweet and savory sauce takes only a few ingredients, all of which you can keep on hand indefinitely (keep your ginger in the freezer). You know, just in case you need some sesame chicken like, now. Oh, and this take-out fake-out sesame chicken works great for your weekly meal prep, too!
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What is Sesame Chicken?
If you’re unfamiliar with this Chinese-American fast food classic, sesame chicken is small pieces of tender chicken that have been coated in an egg and cornstarch, deep-fried until crispy, and then coated in a deliciously sweet, salty, and tangy sauce. The sauce also has a light but toasty flavor thanks to sesame seeds. You’ll find this dish at most Chinese-inspired takeout restaurants across America.
Ingredients for Sesame Chicken
Here’s what you’ll need to make this easy sesame chicken recipe:
- Chicken Thighs: We use chicken thighs for this recipe because they stay juicy and super tender without fear of drying out, and they’re very budget-friendly. You can use chicken breast, if preferred, just be careful to not overcook the chicken.
- Cornstarch and Egg: The combination of cornstarch and egg coats the chicken, keeping it tender and providing something for the sauce to grab onto. This technique of coating meat in a cornstarch mixture is called “velveting.”
- Soy Sauce: The base for the sauce is soy sauce, which provides plenty of salt and umami flavor.
- Toasted Sesame Oil: Toasted sesame oil gives the sauce a deliciously nutty flavor. Make sure to get toasted oil, which has a deep amber color and a much more pronounced flavor.
- Brown Sugar: Brown sugar provides sweetness to balance the salt of the soy sauce and the acidity of the vinegar. Brown sugar has a deep flavor, compared to the more one-dimensional flavor of white sugar. You can also use honey in place of the brown sugar.
- Rice Vinegar: Rice vinegar gives the sauce a nice tangy flavor. Rice vinegar is milder than other vinegar types, which keeps the sauce in balance and not too harsh.
- Fresh Ginger: Ginger gives the sauce zing! Be sure to use fresh ginger, not dried ginger, as it has a much more peppery flavor. Keep fresh ginger in your freezer to always have it on hand without it going bad.
- Garlic: Garlic provides a nice savory base flavor for the sauce.
- Sesame Seeds: Sesame seeds add even more sesame flavor to the sauce and a delicious visual appeal.
- Cornstarch: Cornstarch thickens the sauce into a nice glaze with a translucent, glossy finish.
- Rice and Green Onions: Serve your sesame chicken over a bed of rice with sliced green onions on top for a well rounded meal.
No Deep Frying Required
I specifically wrote this recipe for those of you out there who hate deep frying as much as I do. This recipe uses a very small amount of oil to cook the chicken and because of that, you don’t get super crispy edges as you would with a deep fry, but the trade-off is well worth it in my opinion. No leftover oil to deal with, no cooking oil smell filling your house, and no splattering oil trying to kill you. So worth sacrificing crispy edges.
What to Serve with Sesame Chicken
I like to pair my Easy Sesame Chicken with jasmine rice and a little steamed broccoli. It’s a super simple meal that is very satisfying, and stores well for meal prep! It also goes great with Crunchy Cabbage Salad, Sesame Cucumber Salad, Easy Egg Drop Soup, Savory Coconut Rice.
Easy Sesame Chicken
Servings 4Ingredients
Chicken
- 1 large egg ($0.23)
- 2 Tbsp cornstarch ($0.06)
- 1 pinch each salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs ($3.23)
- 2 Tbsp cooking oil ($0.08)
Sauce
- 1/4 cup soy sauce ($0.24)
- 2 Tbsp water ($0.00)
- 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil ($0.33)
- 3 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.12)
- 1 Tbsp rice vinegar ($0.12)
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger ($0.10)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.16)
- 1 Tbsp sesame seeds ($0.8)
- 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch ($0.02)
For Serving
- 4 cups cooked jasmine rice ($0.70)
- 2 whole green onions ($0.22)
Instructions
- First, prepare the sauce. In a small bowl stir together the soy sauce, water, sesame oil, brown sugar, rice vinegar, fresh ginger, minced garlic, cornstarch, and sesame seeds. (Grate the ginger with a small-holed cheese grater). Set the sauce aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, 2 Tbsp cornstarch, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Trim any excess fat from the chicken thighs, then cut them into small 1 inch pieces. Toss the chicken in the egg and cornstarch mixture.
- Add the cooking oil to a large skillet and heat it over medium flame. Wait until the skillet is very hot, then swirl the skillet to make sure the oil coats the entire surface. Add the batter coated chicken and spread it out into a single layer over the surface of the skillet.
- Allow the chicken pieces to cook, undisturbed, until golden brown on the bottom. Then, carefully flip the chicken, breaking up the pieces into smaller clumps as you flip. Continue to cook the chicken until golden brown on the other side. Stir the chicken as little as possible to avoid breaking the egg coating from the surface of the chicken.
- Once the chicken is cooked through and golden brown on all sides, pour the sauce over top. Toss the chicken to coat in the sauce. As the sauce comes up to a simmer, it will begin to thicken. Continue to gently stir the chicken in the sauce until it has thickened, then turn off the heat.
- Serve the chicken over a bed of rice and sprinkle the sliced green onions over top.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Equipment
- Non Stick Cookware
- Grater
- Color Cutting Boards
Nutrition
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How to Make Sesame Chicken
Make the sauce first, so it’s ready to go when you need it. In a bowl, stir together 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 Tbsp water, 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil, 3 Tbsp brown sugar, 1 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tsp grated fresh ginger, 2 minced cloves of garlic, ½ Tbsp cornstarch, and 1 Tbsp sesame seeds.
Let’s just talk about this toasted sesame oil for a second. You must get the kind that is toasted to get the super vibrant nutty flavor that you want in your sesame chicken. Not all brands actually say “toasted” on the bottle, but you can recognize the toasted variety by its deep brown color. Regular sesame oil will be the color of straw, like vegetable oil. You want the brown stuff. ;) It’s usually in the international foods aisle, instead of the baking aisle with the other oils.
Next, trim any extra fat off of one pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, then cut them into small one inch cubes. One pound for me was about three chicken thighs.
Add 1 large egg, 2 Tbsp cornstarch, and a pinch of salt and pepper to a medium bowl.
Whisk the egg and cornstarch together until it is light and frothy. It may seem thick at first, but as the cornstarch dissolves in the egg, it will thin out and get nice and frothy.
Add the cubed chicken thighs and stir them to coat in the egg mixture.
Add 2 Tbsp cooking oil to a large skillet and heat it over medium. Wait until it is very hot. This is VERY important. The skillet must be very hot! Once very hot, swirl the skillet to make sure the oil coats the entire surface, add the chicken, and make sure it’s spread out into a single layer. Let the chicken cook, undisturbed, until golden brown on the bottom. It will kind of cook into a single round pancake, but don’t worry, we’ll break up the pieces next.
Then carefully flip the chicken pieces, breaking up them up slightly into smaller pieces as you flip. Cook on the other side until browned and cooked through. Make sure to not stir them too much, or you can cause the egg to come off the chicken. You can see that some of the chicken pieces are still kind of stuck together at this point. That’s okay. Just do not over stir.
Finally, add the prepared sauce and stir to coat. Continue to carefully stir the chicken as the sauce beings to simmer and thicken. Once it’s thickened, turn off the heat.
Sprinkle some sliced green onions over top and serve with warm rice. :) Doesn’t get better than this.
Easy Sesame Chicken – done in about 30 minutes, and NO DELIVERY FEE! :D
Sesame chicken is my boyfriend’s favorite Chinese food dish from our go-to Chinese place, and we’ve never been able to find a comparable recipe… until now! This was delicious and super easy. We served it with fried rice and had a little leftover chicken, so the next day I cut up the chicken and made chicken fried rice with it! Yum! My only issue was the breading didn’t quite stick to the chicken… Next time I’m going to try dredging the chicken with flour first.
I absolutely love this recipe. I can’t find boneless chicken thighs, I’ve never seen them in the store, even though I check every time. I just end up using chicken breasts. I also triple the sauce, because it’s so good!
I’d like to know where the hell I can buy a pound of chicken for less than $3.
My local grocery store has sales on boneless, skinless chicken breasts on a fairly regular basis. I catch those sales (usually around $1.99/lb.) and save the meat in the freezer for when I need it. If you do a bit of shopping around and keep an eye on sales flyers, you might be able to get a similar deal.
I was really looking forward to trying this recipe but it was a big flop. First of, I doubled everything because it was meant for four people. I really love the sesame chicken we get at our Chinese restaurant but it’s very different from this. My first problem was when pouring the chicken and egg mixture into the hot oil, I frickin got scrambled eggs and chicken. This egg mixture in no way coated the chicken, it was all separate. I was annoyed. Then the next thing that went wrong was that it all stuck to the frickin bottom of the pan so it smelled like burned egg. The last thing was the fiber strands of the ginger were very noticeable when eating the chicken. Very disappointed!!!!! Needless to say I’ll be trying a different recipe! Just upset I spend all the money I did on this dinner!
sounds like you goofed is all.
Sams club, $1.88 a pound
Walmart…Boneless,Skinless fresh chicken breasts for $1.99lb family pack size
I had a request from a little boy on his birthday for his favorite dish, but his mom couldn’t afford it for a big crowd from a food place. I spoke up and took up the task to make this dish, one I have never done before. This recipe I found,followed and the Birthday Boy was all smiles. Its easy and absolutely delicious. It became a crowd pleaser.
This is one of my favorite recipes, I make it at least once a week.
loved the recipe, so did the hubbster and two teenage girls. I tweeked it a bit, deep fried the chicken since the frier was still out from the night before when my dtr experimented with fries. I tripled everything, added about 1/4 cup OJ to recipe for a touch more tang and a crushed red chili for a little spice. we served over brown rive and added a side of garlic snow peas. Thanks for inspiration. My oldest dtr (15) said the local Chinese take out place has nothing on me.
Just tried this tonight. I had most of the ingredients just had to get a couple things. Made it a head of time and it took only 15 min to make and that included starting to cook the rice 10 minutes before the chicken. I love new recipes and making my owe Chinese take out saves money, time and calories Will make this again.
Looking forward to making this tonight. Your toasted sesame oil looks mighty expensive! Thanks for all the great recipes
Hey Beth! I have been using your site a ton and all the dishes turn out super great! I was wanting to start doing freezer meals, and I was wondering if you thought this was a meal that could be cooked and then frozen and still be good? If so would you cook it all the way and then freeze it or would you do the breading part on the chicken and then make the sauce and freeze them seperately and then mix it together on the day you cook it? If I did it as a freezer meal and cooked it all the way would I reheat it in the oven? What are your thoughts? Thank you for any help you can give me I super appreciate your website and everything you do!!!!!!! -Heidi-
This one is not a great candidate for freezing because of the cornstarch. Sauces thickened with cornstarch tend to break down after the freeze-thaw cycle, so the texture will be different. It might taste okay, but it won’t look very appetizing. :)
I make up a bunch of the chicken and cornstarch mixture (I use only egg whites but don’t know if that would make a difference or not) ahead of time and freeze in freezer bags BEFORE cooking. Works out great! Just thaw it out first and then you can cook it up. While it’s cooking you can make the sauce. (you can also freeze the sauce if it’s easier for you..I choose to make it fresh). My family loves this recipe and requests ALL the time and we never have leftovers!!
Good to know! Thank you so much for sharing that! :)
I made this for my husband a few weeks ago and he loved it so much he went back for seconds! I now have to double the recipe so we can have lunch for the next day. Making it again tonight and he is so excited :)
I’ve made this recipe twice this week. The first time I followed the recipe to a T and it was great. The second time, I coated the wet egg-mixture covered chicken with a dry flour-cornstarch-salt/pepper mixture then cooked as instructed. I found that this gave me a texture more like what I was looking for.
I’ll have to try that! Thanks for the tip. :)
Not bad, but this recipe is assuming you already have the ingredients as nobody purchases a pinch of said items.
Therefore it’s not really a $5 meal, unless by chance you already have an assortment of misc ingredients. Not being negative. I just clicked in here from google and the title was $5 which this isn’t.
Likewise, if you included the full price of the whole packages or containers of each ingredient it wouldn’t be accurate either. Almost no one buys every single ingredient every time they make a recipe. There will always be leftover ingredients and partial packages used. If I use one or two eggs per recipe, I’m not going to include the price for the whole dozen in each recipe because I only paid that full price once, nor do I want to count it as “free” the next time simply because I already had them on hand. The method used above (pricing out only the amount used) is what the food service industry uses to calculate recipe costs for profit and loss purposes. I include only the cost of what is used and try to discard or waste as little of my leftovers as possible. That way, cost of the remainder of the ingredients is accounted for in future recipes. Neither way is perfect, but this is the method that I find to be most realistic. :)
What a ridiculous comment.
Hi!
I was wondering if there was any way that I might be able to make this with pre-cooked chicken from a rotisserie?
Thanks in advance!
Hmm, I’m not sure how that would work. It might over cook if you cook it again in the skillet, and I’m not sure how you’d cut it into pieces. Rotisserie tends to be better for shredding.
Eating this right now – totally delicious! I used chicken breast. I had some trouble with the sesame seeds sticking to the pan instead of the chicken, any troubleshooting ideas?
Hmmm, I’m not sure. You could always leave the sesame seeds out of the sauce and just sprinkle them over top at the end, though. It wouldn’t affect the flavor.
I never comment on any sites but I tried this recipe and a few others I am absolutely hooked, thanks for all the detail you put into your site, it makes cooking so much fun and not so intimidating lol.