Asian Chicken and Rice

Asian Chicken and Rice
(How to Grill Chicken!) 

What if I told you that you do not have to go outside to grill chicken? Put the charcoal and propane up, because today we are grilling chicken on the stove top! With these few easy steps, you'll be recreating your favorite restaurant recipes in no time! 

All you need is:

• Chicken Breast (One breast fed my husband and I comfortably) 
• Frozen broccoli (Fresh is even better!) 
• Stir Fry sauce
• Soy sauce (optional) 
• Asian Sides - Rice (I used chicken flavored) 

(Depending on what you have on hand, this meal could be a $5 meal or less! )

We get the majority of our chicken/proteins in bulk from SAMs club, so the chicken breasts we get are HUGE! We carefully took a knife and cut them in half to make two cutlets. They were still pretty thick after the cut. 

To keep things simple, I just seasoned them with salt and pepper. We have lots of other flavors attending the party later.  Be sure to season both sides! 

At this point go ahead and start cooking your rice according to package directions!! 

Get your favorite saute pan out and turn your stove on med-high (between 5-6ish on your stove) Drizzle a few tablespoons of veg oil on the pan. When the pan is good and hot, you should be able to pick the pan up by the handle, and the oil will move around like water, covering the pan evenly. 

When the oil is good and HOT add your chicken breasts. If your oil is smoking, it's TOO hot. IF your chicken didn't make any sounds, and curl up when it touched the pan, your pan wasn't hot enough. 

After abour 3-5 minutes, lift your chicken up and see if you like the color. If you do, flip your chicken over to the other side, if not just give it a few more minutes until you are satisfied. If you wish there were grill marks on your chicken, there ARE stove top pans you can buy for that. They are flat with bumps on them that look like an outside grill. Like these: Stove Top Grill Pans. 

At this point the sides of your chicken may or may not have been able to get heated very well, so feel free to use your tongs to turn the chicken on their side for a second to cook as well. 

Take your Stir Fry sauce and pour a little on top of each breast. Using your tongs flip the chicken to the other side to get the sauce on both sides of the chicken. This will get sauce all over the pan too, we want that. At this point temp your chicken with a meat thermometer. You are looking for 165. 

Not gonna lie, we didn't even temp ours. We knew our chicken was really thick and that it needed some baking time. If you leave your chicken in the pan to finish cooking, you will burn your chicken, and the sauce too. I set my toaster oven to 350, and walked away. 

No need to waste that delicious sauce in the pan! As a matter of fact, pour a little more in there!  

Dump your broccoli in the warm sauce. Yes, you can put it in there frozen! I did.  Mix it around to cover the broccoli in the sauce. Also so it doesn't just sit on the bottom and burn.

The water from the frozen broccoli, will also keep the sauce from burning the pan too. 

Put a lid on your broccoli, (to steam it)  and take a minute to check on your rice, it should be ready soon! 

When your broccoli is nice and tender, and no longer frozen, pour your rice in to your broccoli pan. The sauce from the broccoli pan with mix in with the rice, and be SO delicious! Turn your stove off, and go check on your chicken! 

If you used fresh broccoli, you don't have to dump it in the rice. We did this because frozen broccoli has a tendency of turning brown after you cook it. 

Our chicken temped at 171, nice! Remember you're looking for 165! 

It's just a matter of plating now!

How to make it look fancy: 

Take a large spoon, and place a bed of rice in the middle of the plate. 

Place your chicken laying on the bed of rice.

Take the stir fry sauce and gently drizzle it over the chicken. 

Ta Da!! You did it! It look's great!! 

Southern Fried Chicken

Just because you went to culinary school, doesn't mean you can't fry chicken the traditional way.
This is great beginner's way to fry chicken if it's your first time frying anything! I've written this recipe so that you will be able to fry not only the chicken you see in my picture... But any kind!

Things you'll Need:

• ANY chicken. I used 4 drumsticks.
• Milk  (Buttermilk is best)
• Self Rising Flour
• Favorite seasonings (I used Mrs. Dash)
• Frying oil (Vegetable is fine, Canola is better, Peanut is even better) 
• Paper towels
• Baking sheet
• MEAT THERMOMETER

For this recipe you HAVE to have a thermometer. This is not a 'timed' recipe. I'm not going to tell you to cook your chicken for X amount of time. Instead, I'm going to teach you how to cook food/chicken SAFELY.  There may be less pictures than usual, because I didn't PLAN on turning this in a blog, but this was easier to tell my friends my 'recipe' Haha. Excited? Let's jump in! 

Step one: Soak/marinate your chicken in milk for at LEAST 30 minutes. I had mine in the fridge for about 2.5 hours. Buttermilk is always best in this scenario, so all you need to do is add about 1 tablespoon of vinegar for each 1 cup of milk the chicken is in. I poured the milk in a separate measuring cup, then added the vinegar. Let it set for about 5 minutes to curdle and then poured it over the chicken in the Tupperware container.

I used my dutch oven for my fryer. In the past we pretty much use any pan in the house. Since we have invested in this dutch oven we have stopped using our slow cooker and a few other pans altogether. It does everything. I just have to remind myself that it retains heat VERY well!

Let's talk frying oil. With out going into a big spill about 'smoking points' and 'will effect your foods taste' , Just know that if you have ever set your smoke alarm off trying to fry something there's a very good chance it's because you heated your oil too high or you weren't using the right kind of oil. See Ingredients List and chose one of those for a place to start. 

There are SO many different way to see if your oil is ready. Stick a wooden spoon in it and see if it bubbles. Put a tiny 'test' piece in it. But. Have you tried Temping your oil? To see what it's Actual temperature is? We want our oil to be 350 degrees. Turn your heat down if it is higher than 375. There are oil thermometers out there, but I just used my regular meat thermometer. 

Oh. Start your stove out on medium heat. That was about a 5 on my stove top. 

I didn't take a picture of putting the self rising flour on the chicken. All I did was grab the chicken with one hand and spoon the seasoned chicken on with the other hand. IF you are not a food service worker, and do not casually have food safe gloves at your house, just use a pair of tongs. OR throw the chicken in a zip-lock bag with the flour. It's your chicken. 

Even with the size of my kettle, I only fried 2 pieces of chicken at a time. (I could have gotten away with 3, but that would have left one piece of chicken to fry by it's lonesome) You do NOT want to crowd the oil. It will drop the oil temperature and will take forever to cook! 

*Almost forgot! We are putting COLD chicken in HOT oil. this will cause TWO things:

1) This will cause a loud noise and some oil flying. It's fine. 

2) This will LOWER your oil temperature. Do NOT turn your heat up to adjust. Just let it be. The oil temp will also be lower for your next batch. Do NOT turn your heat up. Just wait a minute before putting new chicken in. *

How do you know how long to cook my chicken if what I chose is a different size?

Good question! When your chicken is in the hot oil frying, leave it in there until you are satisfied with the COLOR.  If we left the chicken in here until it was DONE, it would be black on the outside. 

I left my chicken in there for about 5 minutes. 

This is where you take your chicken out and put it on paper towels to soak up the excess oil. 

Your chicken looks perfect and beautiful right? Right? Temp it. 

Mine came to 92 degrees. Spoiler Alert: That's VERY underdone. 

That's why proper frying is a TWO step process! 

(Unless your chicken is very thin, then when you temp it at this point it might even be done!)

We are looking for the magic number 165 for chicken.

"If it flies '65" Is what I tell all my trainees. All poultry/birds/turkey MUST be at 165. 

So do you put it back in the oil?

No! We bake it :)

My oven was already on from hash brown casserole cooking at 375, so I threw it in there at that temperature. The foil is strictly for clean up. When this was said and done, I threw the foil away, wiped the pan with a clean towel and put it back in the cabinet. 

How long in the oven?

Depending on how close you were to 165! I was pretty far off, so I left it in there for about 10 minutes. It still wasn't ready, so I checked on it in 5 minute intervals. The last interval was SO frustrating because it said 160 haha. Nope! Gottta go back in! Two of the pieces were actually done early, so I plated those up first and put the other two back in the oven. 

Don't just stick your thermometer in anywhere!!! 

ALWAYS temp ANY thing in the thickest part of the center of the meat for accuracy. 

In this case, we have dark meat on the bone, so I stuck  it in at the top round part, and made sure it was close/touching the bone. 

The chicken that was ready first temped to be 173! (Even after it had been sitting on the plate for a second) So, you KNOW it was done! Anything above the 180-200 area is just going to be dried out. Dark meat is very forgiving to that rule. White meat is not, and will dry out quick. 

Don't forget that meat CONTINUES to cook for a little bit as it sits. Just because it's out of the fryer/oven , doesn't mean it magically stops cooking. Heat doesn't work like that. 

There is so much more about frying I could teach you! But, I will just show you those tips on different recipes! 

I paired my chicken with homemade hash-brown casserole and broccoli salad! 

Feel free to comment below with any questions or comments! I love to help!

Let me know if you use this technique!