One of the easiest ways to buy alcohol while under 21

... is to buy cooking alcohol. Anyways. For the first time since I moved in four days ago, I have prepared a meal for a roommate! The other one decided to eat Chipotle, so he escaped being a test subject missed out on the food. I had a craving for chicken Teriyaki on Saturday, so I decided to make this my first meal:



I looked over several different recipes for this, then ended up with this recipe. The sites I used were here and here.

Chicken Teriyaki (for 2-3)

• 1.2 lbs chicken thigh with bones and skin*
• 40 mL white sugar^
• 80 mL soy sauce
• 80 mL mirin
• 40 mL cooking sake
• 2-3 green onions
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• Rice
  

*Unless you have a local butcher around, it might be hard to find some chicken that has skin but without bone. Realizing this, I called for more meat into the recipe. It's also good to have one 'piece' per person.
^I understand that mL is kind of unconventional to use, but I had no measuring tools except for a cup to measure rice. What's important is to have a 1-2:1-2:1-2:1-2 ratio for [sugar:soysauce:mirin:sake]. For this specific instance, I used [1:2:2:1]. I'll add more on the bottom.

Instructions:
Pull out the bones from the chicken, as well as any hard cartilidge. Then shave the chicken (the side without the skin) so that the meat is relatively flat.
Poke holes into the chicken on both sides of the meat.
Mix sugar, soy sauce, mirin, and cooking sake together in a bowl. Make sure to have some room on the top- the next step is to put the chicken inside the bowl. Keep the entire mixture in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Then rearrange the chicken so that the sides of the chicken exposed to the air is now immersed in the mixture. Do this for another 10-15 minutes.
Take the mixture out of the refrigerator and then heat a frying pan with enough oil (~1 tbsp) to cover the bottom of your pan. On medium heat, fry the chicken with the skin side touching the pan. Keep the mixture. As there are lots of sugars in the mixture, it's important to check on the meat to make sure it does not burn on the outside.
Once the skin is browned to a good (you decide on how brown you want it) shade, flip the chicken so the skin is not touching the pan. Change the stove to a low setting, and then pour the mixture into the frying pan. Cover the frying pan, and then cook the chicken until it is done. (I did it for about 15 minutes and checked my e-mail)
When the chicken is done, take off the lid and remove the chicken. Change the heat to a medium setting, allowing the sauce to thicken more. After about 10 minutes, move the sauce into a bowl. Leave about 2 tbsp of sauce.
While waiting for the sauce to thicken, take the chicken and slice it into 1 cm strips.
Put the green onions into the pan, cooking them with the leftover sauce. When cooked and slightly brown, remove the green onions and then cut them into 2.54 cm long strips. In a bowl, lay the rice on the bottom, the chicken on top, and then the green onions. Pour the leftover sauce onto the bowl, then serve hot.

Conclusions:
Although the chicken smelled delicious while it was cooking, the sauce was in limbo, being either too sweet or too bland. I think I might want to change the ratio to 1.5:2:2:1.5. It probably has to do with the fact that the alcohol content of my mirin was higher than usual while my the alcohol content of my cooking sake was lower than usual. Generally, the ratio is supposed to be 0-1:1:1:1, but fiddling with it sounds like fun.