So easy!
You know how it is when you really want take-out, but you’re too tired to go fetch it? Besides, you’re hungry RIGHT NOW, and the last time you ordered, you got mostly celery, pale onions, and canned water chestnuts and there were only 2 and a half measly strips of chicken (That was chicken, right?) Heck, MAKE YOUR OWN! You can totally do this!
This was SO easy and SO fast and SO incredibly tasty, I shocked myself! I love cooking! It’s like magic! 😀
Easy Sesame Chicken
Recipe Type: Easy, Fast, Cheap
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 1 cup jasmine rice
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs, chopped into bite-sized chunks
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/3 cup low-sodium tamari (gluten-free soy sauce)
- 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup gluten-free hoisin sauce
- 2 tablespoon sweet chili sauce
- 3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
- 2″ fresh ginger, grated
- 6 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup olive oil or organic canola oil
- asparagus or broccoli or whatever fresh veggies you like cut into bite-sized pieces
Instructions
- To cook the jasmine rice, put the cup of rice and water into a sauce pan with a lid. Cook covered on high until it come to a boil; turn to low for roughly 15 minutes to cook till tender. Turn off heat and let it sit with the lid on to stay hot.
- Make the sauce. Add the honey through sesame oil ingredients in a small bowl or large glass measuring cup. Stir together until the honey is mixed thoroughly into the other ingredients. Set aside.
- Combine cornstarch, salt and pepper in a large zip-lock plastic bag and shake to mix. Add the chunks and shake really well to be sure each piece is thoroughly covered. Hint: Make sure the bag is securely closed, or you will discover how far cornstarch can fly!
- Heat a large cast iron pan on a large burner on high until the pan is hot. Add the oil and immediately add the chicken chunks. There should be enough oil in the pan that the chicken is basically getting fried, as in “fried chicken” fried. Don’t worry about the extra cornstarch in the pan. Let the chicken cook until crispy on one side. Flip it in chunks and break them apart if they are sticking together. Cook until the exterior of chunks are crispy!
- Remove the chunks of chicken from the pan onto paper towels to drain any additional fat. Pour the excess oil out of the pan and wipe the pan out. Put the pan back on the burner.
- Dump in your choice of veggies and stir around for a brief moment. Dump in the drained chicken and pour the sauce in right over the top of the whole the lovely mess. Stir it around so all the pieces of chicken and veggies get completely covered with the sauce.
- Turn off the heat and serve with the hot rice. Enjoy!
Leticia Troischesnes
instead of cornstarch would tapioca flour work?
pax2006@comcast.net
Hmmm, I don’t know why not. I bet potato starch would also work. If you end up making it with tapioca starch, please let me know how it went, and the next time I’ll try one of those other “powdery” starches and let you know what happens. Science experiment! 😀