Mochiko Chicken Recipe – Crispy and Delicious Hawaiian Fried Chicken

Learn how to make Mochiko Chicken, a crispy and juicy Hawaiian fried chicken that’s coated in a flavorful mixture of Mochiko flour and spices. Follow our easy recipe and impress your friends and family with this mouth-watering Mochiko Hawaiian fried chicken.

Hawaiian Style Mochiko Chicken made with mochiko, sweet rice flour.

I have a confession to make. I didn’t even make the chicken in these pictures… my husband did. Doesn’t it look good?! He is quite a good cook! But then he goes and does weird things like cutting onions the wrong way no matter how many times I correct him. He cuts it in half like you would cut onion rings, instead of pole to pole. Every time. Who does that? But he’s good at frying things which is one of the best skills to have, in my opinion.

Anyways, it was Saturday evening and he asked me what dinner was and I said, oh… I dunno, what do we have in the fridge? And he said, I’m going to make some fried chicken. And then I said, I love you. Actually I think I said, eh, whatevs, if that’s what you want to do (I’m so ungrateful and I don’t deserve him).

Hawaiian Style Fried Chicken

Mochiko chicken is a Hawaiian style fried chicken. It has Japanese roots, since it uses mochiko (sweet rice flour), soy sauce, mirin 味醂, ginger and other Japanese flavors, but I had never had it until my husband introduced it to me in Hawaii. It’s one of my favorite local Hawaiian dishes, and we get it every time we visit Maui. All tourists and even locals love it. But since we aren’t in Hawaii, thank goodness it’s easy to whip up at home.

Mochiko Chicken Recipe

The Mochiko chicken recipe is different than many other fried chicken recipes, instead of dredging it separately in flour and eggs, you just mix everything together, marinate, and fry! Because you don’t do the separate dredging, there isn’t a thick coating/crunch factor, but the flavor of the marinade is spot on. It’s really simple and tastes amazing!

This chicken is a winner- guaranteed.

Mochiko Flour is a great gluten free alternative to traditional flours. Check out my other mochiko flour recipes including my famous butter mochi recipe for more ideas.

recipe for mochiko chicken with topped with green onions.

Hawaiian mochiko chicken- Mochiko chicken is a popular Hawaiian dish, where bite sized pieces of chicken are marinated in a sweet and salty sauce, and fried to perfection!

4 thoughts on “Mochiko Chicken Recipe – Crispy and Delicious Hawaiian Fried Chicken”

  1. I would like to try this recipe and want to clarify one of the ingredients. It says “2 T sesame”. Is that sesame oil, seasame seeds?

    Reply
    • I haven’t used an air fryer so I’m not really sure. If it can do marinated meats, it should be fine. Maybe just pat the marinade off of the chicken to make it extra dry before putting it in? Let me know how it works out!

      Reply

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