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!!