4-Ingredient Spicy Brown Sugar Chicken Marinade

Caramelized brown sugar and red pepper heat makes this juicy chicken marinade recipe a winner! With only 4 ingredients, it’s not only easy to make, but absolutely delicious.

Say bye-bye to bland chicken — this easy marinade gives you tender chicken with tons of flavor. Marinated chicken is tender, juicy, and has so much flavor, and this is by far my favorite marinade. It’s super easy, uses stuff I always have in the pantry, and works for different cuts of chicken.

This marinade is also perfect for meal prep. You can make a big batch of chicken, then use it in chicken recipes the whole week long. 

What’s in 4-ingredient chicken marinade? 

This marinade uses pantry staples to create flavorful chicken. Here’s what you need to buy: 

• Soy Sauce: This forms the base of the recipe, adding just the right amount of umami. I use low sodium soy sauce, but you can use full salt too. If you’d like to avoid soy, you can sub coconut aminos for this ingredient. 
• Brown Sugar: This caramelizes on the surface of the chicken to give you a gorgeous golden brown. It also balances the soy sauce with some sweetness. You can sub coconut sugar or honey for the brown sugar. 
• Garlic Powder: I love the ease of garlic powder to get that delicious flavor. You can sub this with fresh garlic or jarred minced garlic. 
• Red Pepper Flakes: This ingredient is optional — if you don’t like heat, feel free to leave it out. You can also put in as much or as little as you’d like to play with the heat factor.
• Chicken: While this is not an ingredient of the marinade, you still kinda need it to make this easy chicken marinade recipe work. This recipe makes enough marinade for up to 2 lbs of chicken, and you can basically use whatever kind of chicken you’d like. My favorite is juicy chicken breasts — they come out so well!

Making simple chicken marinade

Here are some step-by-step instructions with notes. For the full recipe, scroll to the bottom of the post. 

Step 1 | Mix It Up

In a gallon Ziploc bag, combine the soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. Massage the bag a little mix the ingredients completely before you add the chicken. 

Alternately, you could mix the ingredients in a small bowl, then pour the marinade into the bag. 

Add your chicken. You can use this marinade on basically any cut of chicken, including boneless chicken breasts, chicken thighs, chicken legs, and chicken wings. This also tastes great on salmon, FYI. 

Ziploc the bag closed, then massage the chicken until it’s been completely covered with the marinade. Place the bag on a plate and put it in the refrigerator. 

Leave your marinade in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but no more than 2 hours. After that, the soy sauce starts breaking down the chicken, and the texture can get weird. 

Step 3 | Cook the Chicken

Your final step is to cook the chicken using whatever cooking method you’d like. I pan fried the ones in the pictures, but this marinade works with grilling, baking, and air frying as well.

​You can throw away any leftover marinade. 

I love to top this delicious chicken with fresh black pepper and fresh herbs. My favorite herbs for this are cilantro and Thai basil. This also tastes great with a squeeze of citrus juice. I recommend lime juice!

There are tons of side dishes that go with this recipe. Here are a few favorites: