Tag: rice recipe

Mom’s All in One Pot Asian Ginger Chicken Rice Recipe.

Hello again, this is another recipe from my childhood….my mom’s signature ginger chicken rice. It’s so shockingly easy to make, you wouldn’t believe how delicious and satisfying this dish is.

It’s best to use chicken meat with the bones still attached, parts like drumsticks and chicken thighs are the best. Also, go easy on the fat trimming as you do need a bit of chicken fat to make this dish a true winner :)

You need a rice cooker for this recipe, otherwise it wouldn’t be as convenient or easy a recipe as it should be…

For the chicken marinade:

  • 3 chicken thighs, with excess fat trimmed off
  • A piece of ginger the size of your thumb
  • 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
  • A dash of pepper
  • 1 tablespoon of chinese rice wine
  • 1 tablespoon of sesame oil

For the rice:

  • 1 1/4 cup of rice (Kim from 2022: by cup I had meant the vessel you use to scoop your rice grains not the actual 250ml measuring cup)
  • A piece of ginger the size of your thumb, sliced
  • 3 tablespoons of oyster sauce
  • A dash of pepper
  • 5 cloves of garlic, whole
  • A dash of salt

# – To make the chicken marinade, first of all, pound the ginger into a pulp to render out the juice.

# – Then, throw the ginger pulp and juice onto the chicken thighs.

# – Followed by 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce…

# – And a few dashes of pepper…

# – Don’t forget the sesame oil

# – As well as the chinese rice wine.

# – Mix together and set aside in the fridge for minimum of 2 hours.

# – Next, prepare the rice as you normally would with plain rice in the rice cooker. Basically, the amount of water needed to cook rice is the same as the amount of rice PLUS one more cup. Hence, for 1 1/4 cup of rice, you need to cook them with 2 1/4 cup of water. (Kim from year 2022 here: Sorry for the unclear instructions about water amount, now reading it a decade later I have no idea what I was even on haha. So, please don’t be bothered by the water amount – just use the same amount of water you normally do when you cook plain rice. Chicken also releases fluid as they cook so you don’t have to compensate with more water;  however don’t over pile bone-in-chicken as this may lead to uncooked meat.)

# – Add 3 tablespoons of oyster sauce, and a dash of salt (I forgot to take the picture).

# – Throw in a few dashes of white pepper..

# – Mix it up till everything’s combined.

# – Next, lay the garlic cloves all over the surface of the rice.

# – Followed by the ginger slices.

# – Lastly, take out the chicken thighs and lay them over the rice, skin facing upwards.

# – Cook for 25-30 minutes (as how you would normally cook rice).

# – Mom’s all in one pot ginger chicken rice recipe, DONE!

# – Garnish with some chopped spring onions before serving.

# – The chicken is tender and delicious.

This is truly an easy way to cook Asian chicken rice. The chicken meat is tender and silky while the rice is fluffy and full of flavours.

I must say this is perfect for busy folks who have not much time as you can marinade the chicken the night before and then just throw them into the rice cooker the following day. As for me, I just whip it up on a lazy day ;)

My cheese baked rice that was not :(

I was really excited about making this dish. My boyfriend absolutely loves it. Whenever we visit one of those Hong Kong themed restaurants, he never fails to order this. One layer of cooked rice, followed by a layer of meat sauce then topped off with cheese and baked till top is bubbly. Easy right?

So easy I didn’t even bother to look at a recipe. That was how cocky I was. Well, as it panned out, my version of cheese baked rice turned out quite bad :(

It was edible…okay let me rephrase, the crust was edible and now and then some bits of rice. The rest? Atrocious.

How could something that looked so good out of the oven and smelled so heavenly turned out to be a complete disappointment?

# – Perfectly good cheesy crust…what could go wrong? Right?

And every cooking failure is a lesson I have to learn from. From my disastrous cheese baked rice, I’ve learnt:

  1. Not to add beans I’ve never cooked before into perfectly fluffy rice just because I need to use some of them up.
  2. Never to buy too many cans of beans I’ve never cooked before because they were discounted. Refer to point above.
  3. Not to leave too much liquid in the meat sauce. Okay, to be more specific….drain the damn tuna. It won’t take too long.
  4. Not to cook too much of something you’ve never made before.
  5. Stick to the cheaper cheeses for first time dishes!!!!!
  6. Don’t EVER, EVER, forget the salt

# – Cannellini beans….not such a smart idea now is it?

I suppose that’s the nature of cooking, you can have some good days but you will bound to experience some bad days too.

If you’re attempting some form of cheese baked rice, and for some unknown odd reason you feel like dumping a can of cannellini beans into your rice, please, I implore you, DON’T!

# – This is an illustration of “BAD MOVE”.

So I screwed dinner up. It’s not too bad, all I had to do was take over the dishes duty and the BF’s successfully pacified. So there, if you’ve encountered any cooking disaster, don’t be discouraged and keep on cooking folks!