Soy Sauce Chicken Oven-Baked is easy to make, juicy, and deliciously seasoned. The soy sauce, herbs, and butter ensure that the chicken becomes tender and crispy on the outside. This homemade soy sauce chicken is a real crowd-pleaser!

Soy Sauce Chicken Recipe
We like to eat chicken because it is so versatile. I've got a lot of chicken recipes with all kinds of cooking processes. I use chicken breasts in a delicious risotto, boneless thighs as a separate piece of meat, crispy chicken wings, or I use boneless skinless chicken thighs in a stir-fry dish.
But the ultimate piece of chicken is surely a whole chicken when it comes out of the oven crispy baked. So that's our cooking method for today. Delicious!
This chicken that is marinated with two different soy sauces, sambal, herbs, brown sugar, and butter gives a delicious taste to the chicken meat. And makes sure that you'll get a tender chicken. The butter makes the skin nice and crispy! And the whole house smells wonderful.
And after dinner, I made a delicious crockpot chicken broth from the leftover bones. That's how everything is used!
What do you need for this chicken dish?
For the preparation of Soy Sauce Chicken you need the following ingredients (you can find the correct amounts in the recipe card at the bottom of the blog):

Soy Sauce used
A mixture of soy sauce is used in this recipe: Kecap Manis and Kecap Medja (both Indonesian Soy Sauces). The latter is the sweeter, syrupy version of soy sauce Manis. Don't have soy sauce at home, but do have light soy sauce, low sodium soy sauce, or dark soy sauce? Then add 2 tablespoons of honey and 1 tablespoon of extra brown sugar to the added soy sauce.
Butter to use
In this recipe, you preferably use butter, unsalted at room temperature. Salt is already added to the recipe. Remove the butter from the refrigerator half an hour before you start making the chicken so that you can mix in the seasonings well. You could also melt the butter on low heat, and brush the chicken.
What are the ingredients of Five Spice Powder
Five-spice powder encompasses the five flavors: sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami and is made from five spices to achieve that. Star anise, Chinese cinnamon, cloves, Szechuan pepper, and fennel seed. This gives an extra rich flavor to the chicken.
How do you make Chinese soy sauce chicken in the Oven?
A recipe with extensive steps, the right amount of ingredients, and which you can also easily print can be found at the bottom of the blog.

Start by making the soy sauce mixture butter. This will serve as your chicken marinade You do this so that you can distribute the flavors evenly over the chicken (because the butter melts slowly, the herbs are absorbed well). Peel the skin from all sides of the chicken by pulling slowly with two fingers and pushing it further loose.
Divide half of the butter mixture under it. Then spread the rest of the butter over the outside of the chicken. Place the chicken in a roasting pan with a rack. Cover the chicken with aluminum foil and bake for 75 minutes. Halfway through, spoon some fat from the roasting pan over the chicken (so that it stays nice and moist).
Remove the foil and bake for 20 minutes without. Keep an eye on it from now on because soy sauce bakes quickly. Now remove the chicken from the oven. Garnish (optional) with sesame seeds, parsley, or spring onions. Serve! It's delicious with brown rice (or white rice) and stir-fried bok choy. Serve sweet chili sauce as your dipping sauce.
- Tie the chicken legs together - You do this so that the chicken is cooked equally quickly everywhere. Otherwise you will get dry burnt pieces (and you don't want that). You can easily do this with kitchen twine.
- Check if the chicken is done - Check with a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the chicken. Because when using a larger chicken the cooking will take a longer time. It must indicate 170 °F (75 °C). If you don't have a roasting thermometer, take a thick needle and insert it deep into the thickest part of the chicken. Then press the chicken meat until moisture comes out of the opening. If the chicken juices are clear, the chicken is cooked.
- Use aluminum foil - In the first part of this recipe, use aluminum foil. Soy sauce bakes rather quickly and this is prevented by the foil. Finally, you want to give the chicken a crispy crust and remove the foil.
- Baste - By basting the chicken with braising liquid a number of times with the released cooking liquid, you'll get juicy and tender meat.
- Oven - If you don't have an oven, use a Dutch oven or your slowcooker (look for the instructions at this rotisserie chicken slowcooker recipe)

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Soy Sauce Chicken Recipe
Equipment
- 1 roasting pan
Ingredients
⅔ stick butter
½ teaspoon garlic powder or 2 squeezed garlic cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 whole chicken about 3 pounds, take it half an hour in advance from the refrigerator
Ingredients you need per step are listed below the step in Italic
Instructions
- Preheat a conventional oven to 430 °F (220 °C) or 390 °F (200 °C) for a convection oven.
- Put the butter in a bowl and add chili paste, garlic powder, 5 spice powder, salt, pepper, kecap Manis, kecap Medja, and brown sugar. Mix everything well.⅔ stick butter, 1 teaspoon chili paste, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, ½ teaspoon five spice powder, ¼ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper, 4 tablespoons kecap Manis, 2 tablespoons Kecap Medja, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
- Place the chicken in front of you and carefully loosen the skin from the meat at the back of the chicken. Then continue with your fingers under the skin to loosen all the chicken pieces. Repeat for the front and back of the chicken. Do it gently so that the skin stays intact. You cannot loosen the skin at the chicken leg quarters.1 whole chicken
- Take half of the spicy butter and grease the chicken on both sides under the skin.
- Brush the outside of the chicken with butter. You can do this with your hands or with a brush.
- Place the chicken in the roasting pan and tie the legs together with kitchen twine. Cover the chicken with aluminum foil.
- Bake for 70 minutes in the oven, check with the meat thermometer whether the chicken is done (see tips). Otherwise, cook for an additional 5 minutes and check again. In between, baste the chicken with the released shortening.
- Remove the aluminum foil from the chicken and baste again with the shortening. Bake in the oven for another 20 minutes until you have a crispy skin.
- Remove from the oven and serve!
Notes
- Refrigerator - Remove the meat from the bones and store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.
- Frozen - Remove the meat from the bones and store it in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months.
- Bones - With the bones, you can make a delicious chicken soup. For example, slow cooker chicken stock with this recipe.
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