Homemade TGI Fridays Sesame Chicken Strips!

Whenever I visit TGI Fridays there’s a handful of things I’d normally order, one of those things is their sesame chicken strips, covered in a Jack Daniles glaze. Sprinkled with sesame seeds and normally served with lettuce (forgive me for skipping that part!) I set out to make homemade sesame chicken strips including the Jack Daniels glaze and wow, what a result, this was truly one of the tastiest and more similar to the real thing recipe clones I’ve ever done! I really hope you try it, even the Jack Daniels glaze alone can be made and used as a sauce just like the folks at Friday’s do, just no singing Happy Birthday to me ok? Thanks

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Ingredients list:
For the Jack Daniels Glaze
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1tsp olive oil
160ml water
240ml pineapple juice
60ml teriyaki sauce
1tbsp low salt soy sauce
250g dark brown sugar
3tbsp lemon juice
½tsp cayenne pepper
1tbsp Jack Daniels
1 small onion, chopped fine
½ pineapple ring (about 5 pieces of pineapple), chopped fine

For the chicken and coating
750g mini chicken fillets
1tsp salt
150g plain flour
150g panko breadcrumbs
1tsp smoked paprika
1tsp garlic granules
60ml milk
2 eggs
Sesame seeds to garnish
Vegetable oil for frying

Recipe method https://barrylewis.net/recipe/homemade-tgi-fridays-sesame-chicken-strips/
#barrylewis #tgifridays #chickenrecipe

this is probably the best closest tasting clone I have ever ever done and I’m serious about that are you sure yeah I am honest [Music] hello everybody it’s Barry here hope you are well wherever you are in the world Welcome to our kitchen today we are doing a recipe clone you know what a clone is don’t you yeah I do some clones before we’ve done you know a fair few McDonald’s recipes where we have cloned them and made them at home in fact one of my favorites uh was the classic Big Mac and also the McRib which was still my favorite thing ever uh McDonald’s have done so uh TGI Fridays yes that place that you go there for me whenever I go there super expensive I really respect the people that work there wearing you know the red and white tops and the badges everywhere and like doing a happy birthday thing like every five minutes oh my gosh the sun if there’s someone working does that not I mean that really makes me cringe that whole thing when I go to TGI Fridays oh oven’s ready I’ll come on to that in just a moment I tend to get like their green deep fried beans like this runner beans that are fried for some reason I love them but the two other things I tend to get and it was a toss up today between whether I do which one and I might do the other one which was a chicken and prawn or shrimp fettuccine with a little bit of cream and chili a blooming gorgeous but the other thing I really liked was the Jack Daniels sesame chicken strips and that is what we’re gonna make today and we’ve already started let’s throw back to this morning hello it’s half past seven in the morning and I’m just about to go walk Boston here is a bulb of garlic I’ve just trimmed off the head taking all the paper off with some olive oil on that and some foil on top so that is being roasted for an hour in the oven whilst I go and walk this cheeky chat and yes an hour later let’s have a look first reveal oh oh you’re beautiful think it looks like caramelization on the top gorgeous uh now Mrs B is gonna absolutely hate me because the house already smells of roasted garlic and kind of gone off cream all right this is a fair bit of prep involved that garlic is just gonna cool down for the time being but we need to get our chicken ready too and I’m really excited to make the Jack Daniels Clays I blumen love it which is weird because I’m not a massive fan of Jack Daniels despite getting four bottles of it for my 40th birthday but we also need to prep our chicken so we’re gonna brine it today I’ve never brine the chicken but apparently that’s what we do for these stir strips and I’m not using uh chicken breast uh you can’t see it too well I don’t really want to touch it right now but the uh fillets I’m using are mini fillets which are slightly like I don’t know like a third of the size of a chicken breast and because it’s me I want them nice and Big And Chunky like that but if you want you can trim it up a little bit to your liking sprinkling of salt covered it in water fully and Now cover it in klinghill [Music] I say I’ve never really like brined something I’ve soaked uh chicken before in buttermilk which helps to make it nice and moist and tender and apparently brining does exactly that put it in the fridge for a minimum of an hour so we can crack on with the rest of our sauce all right so just prep some ingredients for the sauce off camera and I’ve got two bits of advice for you one do not drink pineapple juice after you’ve just brushed your teeth so if you didn’t guess that’s pineapple juice we’ve got water dark brown sugar some soy sauce that’s my other tip the other night we had a Bolognese and you know when you make a stock Cube and you sometimes dissolve it in water put some soy sauce like 50 50 with the water oh that was cheeky uh and some teriyaki okay foreign [Music] pineapple juice teriyaki sauce soy sauce and dark brown sugar in there I know you can’t feel that but if you could then it would probably make the video quite weird but um the sugar has dissolved in so it’s time to warm it that is not going to take long to start bubbling uh so whilst that is uh just finished off I’m getting my other ingredients ready um I need three tablespoons of lemon juice and I feel like sometimes it comes a point where well it’s Pancake Day here in the UK and when I was a kid my mom used to always buy like lemon juice in a bottle like that it just does make it a little bit easier sometimes you just want three tablespoons of this so I’ve turned that down to a low heat it’s nearly there it smells so good what we’ve got here is some cayenne pepper we’ve got the Jack Daniels the lemon juice probably like bottle it like that they just got a lot of people in like just work employee just squeezing lemons and it’s quite a fun job I suppose it says to use about three tablespoons of onion that’s minced and I thought well I’ll just whiz it up and here is one tablespoon roughly of pineapple chunks and they need to be whizzed up too or just crushed we’ve made like a raw onion and pineapple puree wow there is one other thing so the garlic Bowl we roasted earlier it told me to roast The Whole Bowl but we only need two of the cloves and they are nice and caramelized look at that oh my goodness so hopefully I should be able to just mush it oh my gosh did you see that oh that’s amazing just mushed all that and this going in right now ah there we go folks look at that thing it smells it smells so good it’s not simmering it’s shimmering it’s shimmering away uh like a sequin dress when you’re walking along the beach in Western super mare um that isn’t me when I walk the dog by the way boom so in goes the lemon juice and the Jack Daniels oh you can really smell that now I was thinking that’s really surprised when I saw the recipe and I was like oh wow there’s only a very small amount of Jack Daniels considering when you buy it like oh yeah that’s me Jack Daniels that’s gonna get really drunk but like you get in that smell already that is just enough that flavor love it well let’s push in that uh caramelized roasted garlic pieces in there the whole like Aroma of the kitchen it’s just it’s like a garlic conference or something like welcome to the onion garlic conference 2025. probably like my dream weekend uh anyhow that mushed up pineapple can you see all the bits are like that oh my gosh like really wow the vapors then just caught me out really made me want to cry anyhow if you ever ever wanted to make the TGI Fridays Jack Daniel’s sauce that is it because they use this on other things like the steaks and stuff that you could have an optional thing that is how you make it we just have to simmer this now and reduce it down to thicken it for a solid 50 minutes and that is really giving off onion Vapors oh my gosh I promised myself I wouldn’t cry anyhow enough wow the flavor the sweetness the Tang the roasted garlic we’re gonna try and reduce it down by about 50 but like I say in about 50 minutes it should be thickened sticky and then we can use it on our chicken remember folks just like all my recipes this is me trying this for the first time I don’t really believe in uh testing a recipe and then filming it and showing oh look this how you do it perfectly I want you guys to improve it and learn from it and when I do my recipe write up and also add that feedback from the comments you guys leave especially the trolls I do add on some new notes and comments so that when you try this you absolutely smash it in the park and make it look way better than mine so it’s time to start thinking about our chicken that’s the best I got uh here we go this here is the breadcrumb that goes on these Sesame Jack strips okay we have got some plain flour and some panko breadcrumbs now there’s Japanese style ones we’ve also got some garlic granules hopefully you can see a little bit of salt there and of course some paprika now this is going to go back in here but I figured a really cool way to combine it let’s put it into a much bigger bowl and dance I didn’t actually do anything it just kind of showed me that around right I’m um I’m gonna get another whisk [Music] I’ve put the egg into a small baking dish but it kind of reminisces like being like a little bathtub just sort of a nice little dunking pot for it you know the kind of one that sort of people get in a big bathtub uh when they’re doing charity stuff you know when they sit in baked beans why do they do that the chicken I’m gonna get out now all I’m gonna do is give it a wash and Pat it dry the most important thing that I’m keeping an eye on is that sauce just like whisking it every couple of minutes over that steady heat what’s happening to my voice because you really don’t want to burn this after all the effort you’ve gone to so uh yep whisk every now and then steady heat and it’s coming together it’s also good as a serving Duncan sauce out there not just coating it look at this old friend like my absolute bargain Friar I wasn’t sure uh whether to do it in a wok which I like I normally do but I just feel like this fryer is so good holds the temperature uh so if you’ve not seen that video check it out this is my my baby little Friar thing so I’m only gonna do a few pieces of chicken I’ve got eight of the strips here that I’ve patted dry fully so that flour will really get to it giving it a wash first of all but yeah a little bit kitchen towel on there so we can start dunking you’ve seen me do this before but um this is actually quite dry like I say I’ve already put um some kitchen towel on it but you have your dry hand Lee sit it in the bathtub let the excess drip off and just drape it in and then use your dry hand to lift it on there nice and if you’re not happy with it egg again coat again but I am I am actually really happy with that uh I have to tell you though if you’ve watched the channel for years the first times I started doing like dunking stations like this it was so messy so if you can do the dry hand wet hand makes it so much easier and the spoon for lifting it on I really highly recommend that but that’s it all nice and breaded it can sit there we get our oil on look that is absolutely superb oh 350 Fahrenheit which is actually the two dot setting or roughly 180c so I’m just filling this about halfway with some vegetable oil I’m gonna lower this one in oh look at that I think two for the time being is just right oh actually let’s do three why not oh my goodness oh and it hasn’t stuck to the bottom of the basket amazing oh so crispy as well all right I did warm it up again and maybe I might regret that because it might be less sticky stick I’m going to take a piece of chicken and submerge it in that glaze that can be too gentle with it but we don’t want to obviously um lose any of that breadcrumb oh my goodness so I’m just using a fork stick that down there like that now we’ve got sesame seeds to top it and I think they serve it on lettuce I’m not being funny lettuce isn’t really my priority today it smells just like it oh and no one’s singing me happy birthday really hungry oh some sesame seeds that we just sprinkle on there I am blooming happy with that folks that looks insane should we taste what what free yeah I can just tell it’s gonna be great it smells great I think it looks pretty cool got some leftover sauce here it’s actually thickened up quite a lot now so um yeah that’s really good it might have stuck to it better if I waited a little longer warmed it up got a good coating on it but honestly this does smell just like the real thing let’s see what it tastes like remember we’ve brined this chicken as well I have waited so long to do this this is one of my favorite things and genuinely hmm it is absolutely identical that chicken is so moist and tender in the middle one I’ve had them in the past I’ve not really thought about the coating or the crunchiness on there at all and just thought oh it’s just a nice sticky glaze that is absolutely out of this world I promise you if you’ve ever had these and I assume they have them in other countries it could be a UK TGI Fridays they won’t be like what but this is probably the best closest tasting clone I have ever ever done and I’m serious about that are you sure yeah I am honest uh so if you enjoyed the video don’t forget to subscribe if you’re not already make sure if you are that your notifications are turned on as they tell you about all new videos consider following me on social media I’m on most platforms at Mr Barry Lewis and send me a photo if you try this recipe or any of the others and I’m sure yours will be even better but this is truly I’m actually like shocked outstanding please give it a go I’ll see you very soon it’s nice it’s nice nice right um this is a bit weird when I normally I go come on let’s have the build up tell you what it is the girls have actually already had some and they’re getting straight in again you like it love it yeah not too hot a little bit cheeky tie in there yeah it’s a bit spicy a little bit of a kick to it but not so much I hate it that’ll be the Jack Daniels maybe a little cheeky kick mate yeah it’s got like a um a sweet like Tang to it it’s yeah different Daniels yeah that’s the right answer mate what is Jack Daniels but um I’m really inspired now to make some more uh TGI Friday recipes definitely um this is like chicken prawn pasta that I talked about I want to do um all the green beans oh we used to get these a lot when we’d get them yeah we haven’t it’s quite far from where we live so yeah we should make like a dessert from TGI Fridays but they are naughty and if you jump on a chair and sing Happy Birthday to me it’s just gonna say that right guys honestly I’m so impressed with that do try it approved absolutely nice