Rice Cooker Claypot Chicken Rice With Lap Cheong

With the two kids, hubby and the house to take care of, I am always pressed for time. I have formulated several strategies and shortcuts to make my chores simple yet effective. Cooking one pot dishes is one such life saviour for me, especially on weekdays.

For balanced meals, I have to ensure that the one pot dish contains all daily essentials, that is vegetables and meat. I usually add any kinds of vegetables to the usual dish to make it a balanced one pot dish. The trick to get the best combination of vegetables is to use all different colors together, such as red, yellow and green.

One favourite in our house is claypot chicken rice. Except that it is fully cooked in the rice cooker. It is pretty simple, with some prep, and some light sautee, and you can put it into the rice cooker to cook till done, the resulf of which is very satisfying!

I do not have exact measurements of each ingredient because I usually just splash them in as needed. I do keep the salt at minimum, hence no extra salt added apart from the soy sauce. You can tweak it as you like.

I am so slow with the camera that this is the best shot I got of my colourful effort. Recipe as follows.

You need:

2 sets of thigh & drumstick, cut into small pieces

2 cups of uncooked rice (I used basmati)

1 onion, diced

1 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick

garlic ginger paste

4 lap cheong, chopped into biased slices

spring onion, chopped long

diced vegetables - red/green pepper, frozen carrot/corn/peas

Marinade:

light soy sauce

dark soy sauce

sesame oil

oyster sauce

ginger garlic paste

corn flour

Method:

1) Marinate the chicken pieces with the marinade for 2-3 hours.

2) Lightly fry the lap cheong with no oil (I use non stick pan). Set aside.

3) Start to cook the rice as per normal in the rice cooker. Put in the ginger garlic paste and stir. Let it cook while you get onto the next step.

4) Use the same pan, with the leftover fat, sautee star anise and cinnamon with onion till fragrant. 

5) Add in all the vegetables (except spring onion) and sautee for 5 minutes.

6) Add in the chicken and stir fry for 5-10 minutes. Add the ginger garlic paste, and cook for 5 minutes more.

7) Turn off the heat and pour the chicken mixture into the halfway cooked rice, and give it a stir.

8) Once rice cooker turns off, sprinkle the lap cheong and spring onion on top. 

I usually keep it warm in the cooker for 30 minutes after cooking. It allows the chicken to slow cook further, and eventually the meat slips of the bones with no effort. You can see that I use a lot of ginger and garlic paste because I love the aroma that it gives. You can omit it if you are not crazy about it.

The final product, is again, so colourful. I love the freshness of the spring onion, visually and also to the taste! Happy trying!

Healthy Wealthy One Pot Dish - Chicken Briyani Recipe

I have recently started buying basmati rice for our daily cooking as it contains less starch than the usual one. All the more excuse to eat more rice, but funnily enough, for an Indian family, we have rice maybe only 3 days a week. Other days are pasta, noodles or capati.

I have attempted to cook one pot chicken briyani once but it did not turn out well because I missed several things. For one, I dumped sauteed chicken right into the rice cooker with the uncooked rice and expected the cooker to be ok with it. The repeated turning off of the switch got me slowly realise that maybe it does not work that way. It was a havoc then. 

The uncooked rice was soaked with chicken and its seasonings, and was not cooking. I do not know how to cook rice without the cooker, sad but true. Well yeah so its easy for my mom to say 'it is easier to cook rice on a normal pot' but I had never done it, and I can't be there to monitor it all the time. No prize for guessing why. 

Then I saw my life saviour, the pressure cooker! So I quickly dumped everything inside and hoped it will cook fine without spoiling the dish or the cooker. It did not turn out perfect (try cooking soaked rice) but hubby was such a darling to down everything like its the best food in the world. Can't say the same about the kids though.

After several one pot dishes later, now I know. Cook the rice halfway and then pour in your ingredients, cooked or not. Else the rice cooker with turn off on you.

So here I am again attempting my chicken briyani again, in the rice cooker.

You Need:

Chicken marinade:

ginger + garlic paste
chicken, chopped small
some turmeric powder
very little chilli powder
1tsp corn flour
salt and pepper for seasoning

Sautee:
1 onion, diced
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
a few cloves and cardamom
1 tbsp cumin powder
2 tbsp coriander powder
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
ginger + garlic paste
salt to taste
some oil

basmati rice, quantity as desired
some chopped coriander leaves

Method:

1) Marinate the chicken as per the ingredients for an hour or two.
2) Heat up some oil in the wok, once hot enough, sautee the star anise, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves till fragrant. Add in the onion and fry till golden.
3) Add in the cumin and coriander powder. After a quick stir add in the chicken and let it cook for 5 minutes. Season with salt and the garlic ginger paste.
4) Start to cook the rice in rice cooker as per normal way.
5) Add in water and milk, cook for ten minutes.
6) Carefully pour in the cooked ingredients into your rice cooker and stir. If you want to add more vegetables you can also do it now.
7) Now let the rice cooker do its stuff. Once the rice cooker turns off, leave it for good ten minutes in the keep warm mode.
8) Serve with chopped coriander leaves.

I had some spring onion instead, so I sprinkled that. Otherwise coriander leaves are always ideal for any spice related dishes. Also the briyani is quite dry so best taken with some gravy. Since this is the healthy version I restrained from adding any kind of oil or ghee. Else they should be added when cooking the rice. And perhaps more milk and some tomato puree would help to moisten the rice better.

This is what we do in our free time these days. Get the toys together and arrange them on a Avengers Assemble! Note that some poor fellas missed the photo shoot because of broken legs or missing arm. Ah, Boys!