5 Days 5 Lunches: Peanut Chicken

I love me some Thai food. I didn’t really get to experience it growing up. In the 90’s and early 2000’s the only ethnic foods outside of Persian food that I was able to experience were mostly Chinese (Americanized), Mexican, and Italian food. With the food variety expansion that has taken over Howard County, Maryland in the past 10 years I’ve been able to experience a variety of new foods.

Now with Thai Food, I love Pad Thai. It’s one of my favorite dishes, a close second is Peanut Chicken. I decided to slightly combine the two dishes to make today’s post. I’ve done a variation on this dish in the past (pardon the terrible picture, I’m learning.)

I wanted to re-do this dish and revamp with some better ingredients and a new cooking technique.

I stumbled across the method of “Velveting” your meats. (No, it’s not the act of wrapping your chicken in fabric.) I’ve always wondered how the chicken you order in a stir-fry from Chinese restaurants comes in the texture that it does.

Now traditional velveting calls for you to first marinate your meat in mixture of egg white, corn starch,  and rice wine. After about 30 minutes you quickly toss your chicken in boiling oil. That sounded all sorts of unhealthy and quite frankly terrifying. So luckily over at Serious Eats, they tried using a water method as well. It was basically just as effective they found. So I adopted that method for this dish.

Recipe

Ingredients

For the Peanut Chicken

2 Skinless Chicken Breasts Sliced

1 Tbsp Corn Starch

1 Egg White

2 Tbsp. Rice Wine

1 Cup Coconut Milk (I made my own, but you can use store bought if you want)

4 Tbsp. Peanut Butter Powder

3 Tbsp. Thai Yellow Curry Paste

2 Tbsp. Sugar

1 Cup Diced White Onions

1 Tbsp. Diced Lemongrass

2 Crushed Garlic Cloves

1 Cup Chicken Broth

For the Noodles

1 Tbsp. Tamarind Paste (I made my own, but you can buy paste at the grocery store)

2 Tsp. Fish Sauce

2 Tsp. Soy Sauce

1 Tsp. Red Chilli Paste

2 Tbsp. Lime Juice

1 Tbsp. Sugar

Half a Package of Large Flat Rice Noodles

Method

First make your velveting mixture, make sure you have no clumps with the corn starch. Be sure that you dry your chicken well. Marinate your chicken in the velveting mixture for 30 minutes.

Boil your water (I used a large pot, you can use a Wok also). Once it comes to a boil add your chicken, use a wooden spoon to break it up in the water. Once the chicken turns white/opaque (45 seconds to 2 minutes depending), use a slotted spoon to pull it out. Make sure you slot it out onto a strainer to make sure all the excess liquid drips off.

*If you don’t want to velvet the chicken, you don’t have to, if you opt out, I recommend using chicken thigh instead. You can simply saute it with some coconut oil and onions and then add to your sauce once it’s completed*

In a saucepan, add your onions, garlic cloves, lemon grass, coconut milk, curry paste, and peanut butter. As this starts to come together, add half of your chicken broth to the mixture. Let it simmer some more (about 20 minutes). Add your sugar. Then take the mixture and run it through your blender to make a nice creamy sauce.

Pour the mixture back into your saucepan, now add your chicken. Simmer for another 30 minutes, as the sauce thickens add the rest of your chicken broth.

Mix together your tamarind paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, red chilli paste, lime juice, and sugar.

For the rice noodles, heat up some water almost to the point of it boiling. Place your rice noodles in a large mixing bowl and add your hot water over it. Let it soak for approximately 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes you find that your noodles are not cooked, add some more hot water. Just be careful, the noodles can go from not cooked to cooked almost instantly.

Quickly toss your noodles in some cooking oil and add your noodle sauce. Stir this and make sure everything is coated (this should take only 2 minutes).

Plate & Enjoy!