Easy Honey Soy Chicken marinated in sake, soy sauce, and honey. This is a quick and simple meal everyone needs for a weeknight dinner.

On the busiest nights, we all need some reliable chicken recipes to save the day. This is my fail-proof, super easy Honey Soy Chicken that works every time.
Savory and sticky sweet, my family never seem to have enough of these chicken whenever I cook up a batch. I hope the recipe will come in handy on your busy days too!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe:
- So delicious!
- Requires minimal, pantry-friendly ingredients.
- Simple prep work.
- Highly flexible – I used drumettes for its tender dark meat and quick cooking time, but you can use any other cuts of chicken like breasts, thighs, drumsticks, or wings. If you like to fire up the grill or smoker, this recipe works great too.

3 Ingredients Marinade for Honey Soy Chicken
The tasty marinade requires only 3 ingredients:
- Soy sauce
- Sake
- Honey
The savoriness from the soy sauce and the slight sweetness from the honey not only imparts a wonderful flavor to the chicken but also a shiny golden glaze on the surface. The sake or Japanese rice wine tenderizes the meat and helps remove any odor. If you couldn’t find sake, you can substitute it with dry sherry.
All you need is to combine the mixture in a large ziplock bag. Add in the chicken, make sure each piece is well coated, and let it marinade. When ready to cook, pop them into the oven and bake for 30 minutes until golden. The results are tender, juicy drumettes that everyone will love.

Pack Your Chicken Leftovers in the Bento!
If you cook up a big batch for leftover, you can remove the meat from the wings and shred it into pieces and pack it into a bento lunch box with tamagoyaki (Japanese Rolled Omelette), cherry tomatoes, sauteed cabbage, fruits, and onigiri (rice balls).

Itadakimasu!
When the chicken is baking in the oven, I would prepare steamed rice, a simple salad, and miso soup. In no time, a delicious, healthy dinner is ready for the family!
This Honey Soy Chicken makes an ideal candidate for a weeknight dinner. Because they are so fun to eat, my family also enjoys them on movie nights.
More Delicious Japanese Chicken Recipes
- Teba Shio (Salted Chicken Wings)
- Spicy Miso Chicken
- Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken)
- Chicken Teriyaki
- Baked Chicken Katsu

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Honey Soy Chicken
Ingredients
- 1½ lb chicken drumettes (12 pieces; or other chicken parts; if you use drumsticks, marinate overnight for more flavor)
- Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
- Pat dry 1½ lb chicken drumettes with a paper towel to remove the moisture.
- Combine 4 Tbsp honey, 4 Tbsp soy sauce, and 2 Tbsp sake in a Ziploc bag. Tip: I keep the measuring cup upside down to get the last drop of honey while I do the next step.
- Prick the drumettes all over with a fork and season with Diamond Crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Add the drumettes to the Ziploc bag, squeeze the air out, and zip up the bag. Coat the drumettes with marinade all around by rubbing them. Marinate for at least 30–60 minutes. You can also marinate overnight if you prefer.
To Bake
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF (220ºC). For a convection oven, reduce cooking temperature by 25ºF (15ºC). Place the drumettes in a baking pan. Make sure the drumettes are not overlapping each other and the skin side is up. Pour the marinade liquid over top. Bake for 30 minutes.
- Baste the drumettes a couple of times during the baking. If the drumettes are done and the top is not browned, you can change the oven setting to broil until the top is nicely browned. If the top is browned too fast while baking, cover with a sheet of aluminum foil to stop the chicken from burning. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 9, 2013. It’s been edited and republished in May 2020.
Hi. It sounds good. I warmed the honey so it was easier to work with and mixed the ingredients in a bowl so everything was mixed up good. I also added a little ginger.after putting the dried chicken in the bad I poured the marinade in. It’s in the fridge and I will cook it tomorrow.
Hi Alan! Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe and sharing your tip with us! 🙂
We hope you enjoyed this dish with a bit of ginger flavor!
Hi, can I marinate the chicken overnight? Like more than 12 hours ?
Hi Li, Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe!
Yes. You can marinate the chicken for up to 24 hours. But please note that the longer you marinate, it will be salter.
We hope this helps!
Hi there,My son is studying Japanese and for an assessment he has to cook a dish and answer questions. He has chosen the honey soy drumettes which are delicious and quick and easy.. We have a question and it is where does this dish come from in Japan? Is it eaten all over the country or somewhere it is eaten more? Is there any history of this dish? Any help would be appreciated.
regards
julie
Hi Julie! We are so happy to hear your son is studying Japanese and likes this dish!
This dish is a type of Japanese home cooking, and most of the families in Japan use a similar recipe. The base of the flavor is soy sauce, but the sweetness could be sugar or Mirin instead of Honey.
Since this recipe is baked in the oven, the cooking method/technic is newer in Japan and doesn’t have a deep history.
“Yakitori” has a similar taste of soy sauce and sweetness to this recipe, and searching for the word “Yakitori” may help him complete the homework. (Note: Yakitori use much smaller meat)
We hope this is helpful.
This looks amazing and so easy to pull together for a busy weeknight. Can you suggest other items to serve with it, other than a steaming bowl of rice, of course.
Hi TimG! Thank you very much for reading Nami’s post and trying her recipe!
Have you looked at “MAKE IT INTO A MEAL” at the end of this post? They are one of our suggestions.
You can also pair this dish with different salad dishes from our website.
https://www.justonecookbook.com/categories/recipes/salad/
We hope this helps!
Hi Nami! Have tried many of your recipes and love them! I was considering doing either wings or meatballs for an office potluck. How do you think these would be to make ahead & reheat? Thank you for all the inspiring recipes!
Hi Carrie! Thank you very much for reading Nami’s posts and trying her recipes!
This Chicken recipe and meatballs are perfect for the potluck! We highly recommend it. 😃
We hope this helps!
Added ginger, one of my family’s favorite!
Hi Marcia! Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe!
We are glad to hear this is your family’s favorite dish!❤️
Hadn’t made anything new in a while and the simplicity of this lured me back in, albeit with chicken cuts more appropriate for stir-fry than the oven. Turned out great, added a little garlic and it offset everything quite nicely! Thank you again for a great, practical recipe.
Hi DeeCee, Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe and sharing your cooking experience with us!
We are so happy to hear you enjoyed this dish!
Made this dish and it was SO good! How many servings is the nutrition info for?
Hi Gina! Thank you very much for trying this recipe!
We are glad to hear it turned out well! The nutrition info is for approximately one serving, 1/3 of this recipe if you use 1.5 lb chicken drumettes.
We hope this helps!
I really love how simple your recipe is but it tastes amazing. Thank you for sharing your recipe!
Hi Lala, Aww… We are so happy to hear you enjoy Nami’s recipes.
Thank you very much for your sweet feedback!🤗
We made this last night. The kitchen smelled wonderful while it was baking and it tasted fantastic. We did use drumsticks because that is what we had. Great recipe!!!
Hi Stephanie, We are glad to hear you enjoyed this Honey Soy Chicken recipe! Thank you very much for trying and for your kind feedback!
Delicious and so easy to put together! I made this for my mom and I’s lunch paired with miso soup and steamed veggies – a nice well rounded meal. A quick tip I like to use for the honey – I keep a small bowl/mug of hot water to leave my spoon in while measuring out the honey. When the spoon’s hot, the honey slips right off! Thanks again for the recipe 🙂
Hi Morgan, Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for sharing your tip with us! We are so happy to hear you enjoyed this dish with miso soup and veggies!
Hi. I put the honey in the microwave for about 15 seconds so it a little warmer than room temperature and very easy to work with. I mixed the sauce in a bowl first so it was well mixed up then put it in the baggie with the chicken. I also added a little ginger. It’s all in the fridge now, I will cook it tomorrow
Great recipe, I used breasts and thighs and turned out amazing. Even the picky eaters in the family love it.
Hi Andrew!
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback!
We are so glad to hear you and your family enjoyed this Honey Soy Chicken!😊
Super simple and delicious. Got back from the grocery store and I was looking for something quick and easy. This was not only easy but very delicious. Drumsticks were $0.49/pound so I had to buy them. 5 Drumsticks equaled the amount of chicken for this recipe. I went with only 3 Tbsp of soy sauce instead of 4 to cut down on the salt and the taste was still delicious. I marinated the drumsticks for about 1 hour in the same glass dish I used for baking, flipping every 15 minutes. The drumsticks were done in 45 minutes.
My Japanese wife will use the leftover sauce for nimono. Nimono is a simmered dish in Japanese cuisine. Nimono generally consists of a base ingredient simmered in shiru stock flavored with sake, soy sauce, and a small amount of sweetening.
Hi Jim and Yuka!
We are so happy to hear this dish was a quick, easy, delicious, budget-friendly recipe!🙂
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for sharing your cooking experience and tips with us!
Hi Nami, what do you reccommend making for side dishes? is this good with rice?
I have a lot of side dishes (https://www.justonecookbook.com/categories/recipes/side/) that you may be interested in based on the ingredients you have or you like.
If you go to RECIPE INDEX (https://www.justonecookbook.com/recipes/), you can use a “filter” to narrow down your interest. You can click “side” then use other filters to narrow down. Hope this helps! 🙂