Shoyu Chicken from Aloha Kitchen Cookbook

In her debut cookbook, Aloha Kitchen, my friend and popular food blogger, Alana Kysar, shares her whole heart. It beats with every page, within every recipe (like this Shoyu Chicken), in each stunningly beautiful photo, and in how she wields her voice to both show and tell us, her lucky readers, just how magical her Hawaiian homeland is. 

“This Hawaiian word Aloha means so much. It means love and affection, kindness and compassion, mercy and sympathy, pity and grace, and is also used as a greeting and farewell. It’s a feeling, a state of mind, an attitude, and a way of life.”

Alana Kysar, ALOHA KITCHEN

An aloha state of mind – I really love that … I understand all too well how terrifying it can be to try to capture the essence of a beloved place when you don’t technically/ethnically/culturally identify with it. Alana isn’t Hawaiian by ethnicity and I never lived a stereotypical “Appalachian” lifestyle or claimed to have ever done so. But it turns out that those things aren’t what define a place as home; they aren’t prerequisites for loving where you come from. Rather, it is the people, the relationships, families, flavors, sights, sounds, memories, and time spent somewhere that nourish and nurture a love for home, and they are what help our roots take hold. Alana captures this so beautifully in her book. 

Not to go making this post about myself (how rude, Lauren) but I was so struck as I read through it – struck by some very specific parallels between our two books – that my eyes literally welled up with tears.

“I was a typical teenager who was desperate to go to college across the all expansive Pacific Ocean, so my love and appreciation for all things Hawaii didn’t really come until after I had moved away and no longer had access to my mother’s amazing mochiko chicken, teriyaki beef sticks , and beef stew.”  –

ALANA KYSAR, ALOHA KITCHEN

I could relate to her words due to our uniquely shared journeys as cookbook authors, but I’m sure the simple notion of wanting to honor and share your home is something with which so many can relate. Many of us don’t fully appreciate where we’re from until we’ve left – until we’ve tugged up our roots and planted them down in different soil. Sometimes it takes leaving home – growing up and away from it – to really see it with different, more grown up eyes and to gain a greater appreciation and curiosity for it. 

But what I’ve learned to be true, and what Alana expresses in Aloha Kitchen, is that without even realizing it, our hearts stay put in our homelands no matter how far or wide we may roam. That’s the part that you can’t dig up and take away. I love how, with this beautiful love letter to Hawaii, Alana has taken us home with her, to where her heart so clearly is and always has been.

And then there is the deliciousness of it all. For the life of me, I simply could not decide what recipe I wanted to share here so I played my favorite game of cookbook roulette and literally just flipped through the book, eyes closed, and let it open where fate decided it should. Enter this ** fantastically delicious ** shoyu chicken. 

This recipe is a total stunner. The flavor is off the charts and what’s more, it’s easy and very low maintenance, what with its one-pan requirement and minimal ingredient list (we love this at My Kitchen Little, clearly).

“One of my favorite plate lunch options, shoyu chicken, will forever hold a special place in my heart because it reminds me of my uncle Johnson and aunty Vicki, owners of Surfside Deli in Kihei ,Maui. (It is a common sign of respect in Hawaii to call elders “aunty” or “uncle” ; we’re not actually related.) Surfside is a local-style deli, meaning they do not serve lox and bagels and are not known for their sandwiches, instead serving up plate lunches to surfers, construction workers, and anyone who happens to be nearby and hungry! Shoyu chicken is their number-one seller, and for that reason, I cannot think about this perfectly balanced sweet, salty, umami-packed chicken without thinking of Uncle Johnson and Aunt Vicki …”

ALANA KYSAR, ALOHA KITCHEN

I have had the opportunity to enjoy an authentic Hawaiian plate lunch only once, and it wasn’t even in Hawaii (I’ve never been) – it was at a Hawaiian restaurant in Seattle. Regardless, the proprietors were Hawaiian and knew their way around a classic plate lunch. It was not only delicious, but it was refreshingly new to me. Experiencing different cultures through food is, without question, one my favorite pleasures in life and a recipe like this appeals to that truth so completely. Should your sense of wanderlust start acting up, you can simply open up your favorite cookbook … and away you go. 

If it’s not completely obvious, I’m totally smitten with this cookbook and this recipe for her Shoyu Chicken, and think everyone should run-not-walk their way to their favorite bookstore, whether online or in person, and scoop up a copy. 

What is Shoyu?

Shoyu is simply soy sauce, the beloved, salty, dark brown thin sauce that is made from soy beans that have been fermented (fermented soy beans). There are typically two kinds of soy sauce available for purchase at most supermarkets and grocery stores these days: tamari (which is gluten free) and made only from the soy beans (soya beans), and shoyu, which is made from both the soy beans as well as some wheat/cereals (not gluten free). For today’s recipe, however, you can absolutely swap in tamari for the shoyu and process with the recipe as written, no harm no foul.

Here is a ready-made pin for you! Simply save it to your “Easy Dinners” board for quick retrieval and you’ll be all set when the craving strikes.

Print