Tag Archives: Chicken

Chicken

Easy Homemade Chicken Nuggets

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Even though I almost cook everyday at home, and my husband is satisfied with my food, he still needs to have fast food like KFC or McDonald occasionally. Part of him is really crazy about fast food. That’s also why I cook fried chicken once in a while. One day, I asked my husband if there is any food he wanted to have, he’s like “can you cook chicken nuggets for me?”  with his small eyes wide open. I’ve never disappointed him in cooking so far. So my answer is “yes”. And I am gonna cook chicken nuggets for the first time.

  1. I used chicken breast as main ingredient. Cut a whole chicken breast into small chunks (one-bite size).
  2. Prepare a bowl. Add in 1 cup bread crumbs, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp paprika powder, 1/2 tsp ginger powder, 1/2 tsp garlic powder and 1 tsp dried oregano. Mix them well.
  3. Beat 1 egg in another bowl. Also prepare some flour.
  4. Dip chicken in flour first. Shake off the excessive. Then egg and seasoned bread crumbs at last.
  5. Deep fry chicken till golden brown and crispy.

Out layer is crispy and full of seasoning flavor.

https://flic.kr/p/TzPqyC

Meat inside is very tender and juicy.

And of course, my husband loved them.

Chicken

Chicken Leg Rice

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1. Prepare chicken legs. Wash them clean. I used 3.

2. Place them in a deep pot. Add in enough water. Bring to boil. Skim the soup, remove all the floating dirt.

3. Add in 2-3 ginger slices, 3 cloves of garlic, salt to season. Cover the lid. Turn to low heat and simmer for 20-30 mins.

4. Turn off the heat. Take the chicken out.

5. Prepare 1 cup rice. Wash and drain. Turn on the rice cooker. Cut in 1 small cube of butter. When butter melts, add in 1 tsp chopped garlic and 1 tsp chopped ginger. Stir fry till aromatic. Add rice in. Stir fry a bit. Pour in 2 cups of chicken soup from the pot. Add in a pandan leaf knot. Cover the lid and cook the rice.

6. Place chicken legs in a bowl. Add in 1 tablespoon light soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon dark soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce and 1 tablespoon honey. Mix chicken with sauce well.

7. Into the oven 200 degree C for 20 mins. Flip over in the middle.

Serve the chicken leg with rice and chili sauce.

My husband loves it, especially chicken leg.

Chicken, Soup

ABC Soup

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My husband used to cook this soup for me.  That’s really shocking since he seldom cooks. He cooks for maybe 10 times at most and chooses to cook soup. Why? Because he just needs to put all the ingredients into a pot and let the cooker do the rest work. That’s why I cannot say he doesn’t cook at all.

According to him, this soup is full of vitamin A,  B and C, and that’s how it gets the name.

Main ingredients are chicken leg (you can even use pork instead), vegetables (tomato, potato, carrot and onion). The most complicated part is to handle vegetables. (When my husband cooked this soup last time, I cleaned and cut all the vegetable for him.) Cut vegetables into medium chunks.

Put chicken leg into a pot, add in enough water. Bring to boil with high heat first. Skim the soup and remove all the dirt to make sure soup is clear. Then add all vegetable pieces in. Tun to low heat and simmer for at least 45 mins.

Don’t forget to season with salt before serving.

https://flic.kr/p/24wE2e2

I cooked for my husband when he felt a bit sick and didn’t have appetite. He finished this whole bowl of soup. Ate up all the vegetables and chicken leg.

Broccoli, Chicken

Chicken Breast Broccoli Roll

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1. Place a half chicken breast on a chopping board. Cover it with plastic wrap. Use a meat hammer to hit the chicken till it becomes a flat thin disc.

2. Prepare 1/4 head of a small broccoli. Cut into small pieces. Bleach in water for 2-3 mins. Put them in a blender and blend into coarse paste.

3. Pour the broccoli paste out. Season with salt and pepper. Also drizzle in a little olive oil.

4. Sprinkle salt and pepper over both sides of flatten chicken breast.

5. Spread broccoli paste onto it. Gently roll it from one end to another.

Use toothpick to fix it.

6. Also drizzle a little olive oil over the shocker breast roll.

7. Preheat oven to 180 degree C. 15-20 mins.

Chicken

Fried Chicken Drumsticks

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When will my husband be tired of fried chicken? I guess the answer is “NEVER”!

This time I used chicken drumsticks. I cooked 6 of them.

  1. Use a sharp knife to cut a little above the joint. Then pull the chicken meat down to separate from the joint.
  2. In a bowl, add in 1/2 cup chili sauce, 1 egg, 1/8 cup water. Mix them well.
  3. In another bow, add in 1 cup flour. Season with 1 tsp salt , 1 tsp black pepper and 1 tsp paprika powder. Mix well too.
  4. Dip chicken in the sauce then roll in the flour mixture. Shake off the excessive. Deep fry for about 10 mins.

When I called my husband to come for lunch, He saw the fried chicken.  He’s super happy and did that weird dance.

https://flic.kr/p/2e8ypKA

Chicken

Sticky Rice Chicken (糯米鸡 Lor Mai Gai)

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This is a very popular Cantonese dish. My husband is a big fan. Actually, it can be found easily from local supermarket, and the price is very cheap. But I really want to try and make it by myself at home.

Ingredients: (Actually my meat portion is too large compared to rice, so I suggest using less chicken and pork. Cut down to 1/2 or 2/3).

sticky rice 1 cup

water 1 1/2 cup

1 boneless chicken leg

pork belly 100 g

Chinese sausage (La Chang) 1

dry shiitake mushroom 6

light soy sauce 1 tbsp

dark soy sauce 1/2 tbsp

cooking wine 1 tbsp

oyster sauce 1 tbsp

sugar 1 tbsp

five spice powder 1 tsp

salt 1/2 tsp

  1. Soak sticky rice over night. And steam for 25 mins. Or you can just put sticky rice and water into rice cooker and let the rice cooker do the job. (When I use the rice cooker, I put in too much water. As a result, my sticky rice is very soft and grains are broken. So I suggest less water here.) When rice is cooked, open the lid to let it get dry and cool down.
  2. Soak dry shiitake mushroom in water till soft. Don’t throw away the shiitake water.
  3. Cut chicken into medium chunks, pork belly into short strips. Put them in a bowl. Add in all the marinade ingredients: light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, cooking wine, oyster sauce, sugar, five spice powder and salt. Mix well and let them marinate for 30 mins.
  4. Dice shiitake mushroom and Chinese sausage.
  5. Heat a pan. Add in 2 tsp oil. Shiitake in first. Stir fry for a min. Then add in sausage, chicken and pork. Stir fry till meat turns white in color.
  6. Pour in 1/4 cup shiitake water and simmer for 3-5 mins to reduce the sauce.
  7. Since I don’t have lotus leaf, I used parchment (cooking paper) instead.
  8. Place sticky rice at one end of the paper. Put chicken, pork, mushroom, sausage over the rice. Drizzle a little sauce to add flavor to rice.  Then roll it from one end to the other. Twist two ends.

https://flic.kr/p/2dXi8Hg

Steam for 30 mins.

https://flic.kr/p/2fgvhES

AS I said at the beginning, my sticky rice is too soft. Apart from that, everything is nice. And my husband gave it thumps up.

You can dig in just unwrap the paper, or you can put it into a bowl.

 

Chicken, egg, tofu

What’s In My Husband’s Bento Box?

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The biggest meal of the day for us is lunch. We usually have a very simple and light dinner. And also because sometimes I go back home late after work, I don’t have much time to cook dinner. Normally, my husband and I have lunch together at home having home-cooking food. But he needs to meet with colleagues or professors occasionally, under which circumstance he can’t have lunch at home. So I came up with this idea – putting lunch in his bento box and keep it for his dinner.

This is what inside my husband’s bento box:

Meat and vegetable are must-have dishes.

Chicken leg is a good choice, since he’s never  tired of juicy and tender honey roasted chicken leg. Here is how I cook them:

Honey Roasted Chicken Leg

I also added sweet and sour tofu:

Sweet & Sour Tofu

and scrambled egg with tomato:

Scrambled Egg With Tomatoes

For green vegetables, and fish cake, It’s very simple. Just fry them with a little oil and season with salt.

The bottom layer is brown rice. The sauce from tofu and chicken will go into rice and add more flavor.

I also made some bean soup (including red bean, red kidney bean, black bean, black sesame, barley and red date) .

Healthy Bean Soup

And kept the soup in a monkey bottle.

https://flic.kr/p/RzeJMz

I put them in the fridge. When I come back from work, I can just reheat the bento in microwave. My husband likes cook drink, so cool bean soup is perfect for him.

To me, this bento method is really convenient. Another good thing about bento is that my husband can’t be picky on food. He prefers to have more meat when we have lunch together. With bento, he had no choice but to finish all the vegetables I prepare for him.

Every time he’s quite excited about eating bento. At least I can see his big satisfactory smile when he’s having chicken leg. 🙂

Chicken

Ground Pot Chicken (地锅鸡 Di Guo Ji)

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Di Guo Ji is a very famous dish from Xuzhou, China. My sister  went to a university in Xuzhou and I paid several visit there. But I have only tried Di Guo Ji once, and couldn’t forget about it ever since.

This dish is a combination of braised chicken and flour cake (mian bing or bingzi). Chicken is tasty and juicy while bingzi also absorbs the flavor from gravy. Bingzi is actually my favorite part of this dish.

  1. Prepare chicken. I only cook for my husband and myself, so I just need half chicken. Chop it into small pieces. In china, especially in northern part, when we cook (braise or stir fry) chicken, we usually chop it into small pieces.Which means you need a big knife, sharp and hard enough to break the chicken bone. That’s the most difficult part for me. I don’t have that Chinese style knife and really don’t dare to hit the chicken that hard. So I just cut the chicken at joint or the relatively soft bones.
  2. Heat a pan. I recommend a skillet. Add in 1 tablespoon oil. In with the spices, ginger, onion, star anise, dry chili, bayleaf. Saute till aromatic. Add in all the chicken piece.
  3. Stir fry chicken patiently and gently. When the chicken turns white in color, pour in 1 tablespoon cooking wine. Stir for another minute.
  4. Drop in 1 tablespoon sugar, let the chicken be coated with sugar evenly.
  5. Add in 1 tablespoon light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oyster sauce and 1/2 tablespoon dark soy sauce. Blend evenly.
  6. You can also add vegetables in this dish, like potato or bamboo shoot. I chose potato (2 medium ones). Peel them and cut them into medium chunks. Also add potato into the pan.
  7. Pour in enough hot water can cover all ingredients. Lid on. turn to medium low heat and simmer for 20 mins.
  8. For flour cake: 1 cup flour and some water. Mix them well in a bowl. Knead into a dough ball. Lt it rest for a while. Then divide it into 8 small dough balls. Soak them in water for about 5 mins.
  9. Stretch dough ball by hand to make it a thin long oval shape. Press one end to the pan and let the other one end float on the chicken gravy. Lid on and simmer again for another 15 mins.

Gently  tuck bingzi under the chicken and potato. (You can skip this step if you think it’s too troublesome.) Season with salt. Sprinkle chopped green chili and spring onion on the top.

https://flic.kr/p/2dM1hKD

Chicken is a bit like Huang Men Ji.

To me, all the essence is in the bingzi.

https://flic.kr/p/T2EH6q

Chicken, Uncategorized

Lemon Chicken Chop

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Main ingredients are lemon and boneless chicken leg.

1. Sprinkle salt and pepper over both sides of the chicken. Rub a bit.

2. Heat a little oil in the pan. Put the chicken in with skin side down. Fry for 2-3 mins or till skin gets golden brown.

3. Flip it over and fry the other side till brownish.

4. In a bowl, prepare sauce: fresh juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 tsp salt. Mix all the ingredients well.

5. Pour sauce into the pan. Turn to low heat. Simmer the chicken till sauce reduce.

And serve hot with lemon slices.

Chicken, Pasta

Black Pepper Chicken Breast Spaghetti

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1. Cook spaghetti following the instruction. Drain them and set aside for later use.

2. Cut chicken breast into shreds. So are the onions and green chili.

3. Heat a little oil in the pan. Add the chicken breast in. Stir fry till the color turns while.

4. Onions and brown mushroom in. Sauté till aromatic.

5. Add in 1/2 tsp light soy sauce, 1/2 tsp sweet cooking wine. And green chili. Stir fry for another min or 2.

6. Add in Spaghetti. Toss to mix well.

7. Seasons with salt and black pepper.

I also add in some oven roasted tomatoes.

Oven-roasted Tomatoes