This is a post that could be subtitled: when it says use low-sodium soy sauce, they mean it!
I’ve never bought low-sodium soy sauce before. I prefer to use full-flavored fun. So, when I used the high-octane stuff in the sauce in this dish, it turned into a salt lick.
Muffin, however, adored it. It had hand-julienned stir fried carrots and bias-cut snow peas, of course. It had crunchy chicken. It had a salty sauce made with apples. It was over rice and fancy.
He loved it.
I loved every aspect except my massive mess-up on the sauce.
Josh couldn’t get past the sauce.
Lesson learned: I purchased two bottles of the low-sodium stuff for next time. And there will be a next time. (Evil laugh) There’s always a next time!
Be prepared to use many (if not most) of your stove top cooking vessels on this one. I would volunteer someone else to do dishes on the night you serve this.
Some components are good enough on their own. The carrot-and-snow-pea stir-fry would be a great side for any “Chinese” dish. Or as a side for the chicken with some flavored rice (or even couscous…if you can get back the feeling that you are trying to eat large grains of sand or tiny eyeballs).
That’s pretty awesome that you can extract two components of this dish that would be awesome as their own dish (main or side).
Because of all of the food prep, I wouldn’t consider this a weeknight meal, unless you do all of the prep possible on the weekend and make it on a Monday or Tuesday.
I may have mentioned this in the past, but Muffin loves “Chinese” food, just like Josh and me. When I asked him on a recent eating-out day (when the meal plan simply was not…going…to…happen…It was too hot to contemplate anything), he promptly said “Chinese.”
Maybe that’s why he likes this dish so much.
Fuji Chicken
(Followed exactly from Mandy’s Recipe Box)
1-1 1/2 pounds-worth of boneless skinless chicken breasts, divided into four pieces if not four individual breasts
1/2 cup flour
2 eggs
2 tsp milk
2 cups panko crumbs (They must be panko to get the crunchy)
1 1/2 cups matchstick carrots (I cut by hand, and it took forever)
2 1/2 cups snap peas, cut in half diagonally
4 cups of rice (You may have extra to make rice pudding or fried rice at a later date)
veg oil or canola oil
1 cup soy sauce (USE LOW-SODIUM)
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon (possibly more) cornstarch
1 medium Fuji or granny smith apple, peeled and cut into matchsticks
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Take your aggression out on the chicken: Place each chicken breast (one at a time) in a quart-sized zippy bag. Pound with your mallet to thin and even (in thickness). Repeat with remaining chicken.
Take out three shallow dishes. Put flour in one. Whisk together eggs in milk in one. Place panko in the third. Using one hand (Seriously, only one hand needs to be club hand…you need one clean hand to turn on the faucet to wash the other off. Keep your other hand behind your back. Do it!!!), dredge each breast in flour, dunk in the egg mixture, and roll until coated in panko.
Heat a large oven-proof skillet over medium high heat. Add in oil (one tablespoon). Cook each side of each chicken breast 2-3 minutes per side. Place chicken in preheated oven and continue to cook 15-20 minutes (or until done).
While waiting for the chicken to finish, make the sauce by combining soy sauce, water, brown sugar, ginger, cornstarch, and apple in a pot on the stove. Whisk constantly. Bring to a boil and boil one minute.
Reduce heat and simmer five minutes. Check the consistency of the sauce. Add water (too thick) or cornstarch (too thin), as necessary.
In the same pan that held the chicken (so, yes, after the chicken is done), stir-fry the veggies in 2 teaspoons of oil until crisp-tender (stir-fry consistency).
Slice chicken into strips and place the strips together puzzle-style.
On a plate, make a bed of rice. Add a layer of veg on top of the rice. Arrange one piece of chicken’s strips artistically with little spaces between over the veggies. Drizzle sauce artistically yet copiously over all.
Serve with remaining sauce.
Enjoy this completely Muffin Approved dish!
(In fact, I promised him a while back that I would make it again.)
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