Cheat’s Chicken Rice
A quick and EASY recipe to use up your favourite rotisserie chicken from the shop!
Who doesn’t love a roast chook (that’s chicken in Australian…) for a quick and easy meal?
The grocery store roast chicken has a very special place in my heart. My family would drive down to Seattle (from Vancouver) to go shopping at Costco when we were kids. Costco was, and is still one of my favourite places. It’s chaotic and I should hate it. It’s not very sustainable, lots of imported food that’s travelled way to far… but deep down, I can’t help but love it. It reminds me of my family and how much we love a bargain.
Anyways, every time we drove down and did a big shop at Costco, all of us kids would fight of which snack we wanted to buy, or what to order at the kiosk. Instead of getting any of those things, my parents would be a whole rotisserie chicken and a bag of…what seemed like 100 bread rolls. Dinner. Sorted.
Now, when I get a roast chook from my local Woolies, it still kind of reminds me of those days. Sticky, greasy fingers, from chomping on a drumstick in the backseat of the car. Reaching into an oily bag to pull off the skin…my favourite part of a chicken. My mum stealthily assembling a chicken sando in the front seat and feeding it to my dad, while he drove us all home.
To say the least, I love a roast chook.
But there must be MORE that we can do with a roast chicken!?
When I moved to Melbourne, I moved in with a friend of a friend. I was so pleased that she ALSO loved roast chickens! On our first roomie grocery shop, we picked up a roast chook and brought it home. In my head, I was already thinking about what I was going to do with it. Maybe… Have a thigh and make a salad. Make a chicken salad sandwich for lunch the next day. Boil up the bones and make a stock and have noodle soup for dinner?
I was shocked when we got home, she cut off the breast and then just left the rest in the fridge untouched.
It was great for me, because I was able to cook all of the things I was brainstorming on our way back from the grocery store, but I was bamboozled that she wasn’t interested in eating the rest of the chicken!
When I asked her why she bought a whole chicken and ate it only once, she said that she only like the breast, and didn’t know what to do with the rest of it. And a roast chook was cheaper than buying and cooking chicken breast from scratch.
Makes sense.
From then on, we always shared a roast chook, so that nothing was being wasted, and our broke-ass 20 something year old selves were not losing out on too much money.
That explains the Cheat’s Chicken Rice
Chicken Rice is one of my favourite dishes. Perfectly poached chicken-y chicken (I can’t describe it in any other way…it tastes so chickeny!), tender, moist meat with slightly chewy and bouncy skin, served with an aromatic rice cooked in the stock and fat.
It’s a great dish, but it takes a bit of time to whip together.
What if you just want the gist of it…. in like… a quarter of the time? Well, boy oh boy, do I have the recipe for you.
Roast chook, served with the most addictive ginger spring onion sauce, and coconut rice. Coconut rice is not traditionally what you’d serve in this recipe, but nothing in this recipe is authentic really, we’re using a Woolies roast chook for goodness sake! But it will bring some depth to this dish without needing the fat and flavourful stock from poaching the chicken.
Cheat's Chicken Rice
Ingredients
Instructions
- Peel the ginger using a spoon. Yup, just literally scrape the skin off!
- Trim the ends of the spring onion off, just the bit with the roots. Thinly slice the spring onion, you can use the whites and the greens. Place the thinly sliced onion into a small heatproof bowl.
- Finely mince the ginger, or you can also grate the ginger using a microplane. Place the minced ginger on top of the sliced onions. Sprinkle in the pinch of salt.
- In a small pot, heat up the neutral oil on medium heat. The oil will be hot enough when it starts to ripple. You can test it by sticking the back of a wooden spoon or a wooden chopstick in the oil; it should start bubbling straight away. If it doesn't, let it heat a bit longer.
- Once the oil is hot enough, pour it all into the bowl of spring onion and ginger. It should sizzle and bubble away, and the fragrance will transform from 'punchy' and a bit spicy, to savoury and aromatic.
- This addictive sauce can be eaten straight away, but will develop in flavour as you let it sit. You can store it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks if you scoop it using a clean spoon and into a clean jar!
- Rinse the jasmine rice 2-3 times until the water becomes less murky. You can use this starchy water to water your plants...they absolutely love it.
- Strain the rice and add it into a small pot. Pour in the coconut milk. If you are using fun aromatics, add them now!
- Bring the water and rice to a boil on high heat, once boiled, turn it down to a simmer on the lowest heat. Place a lid on and simmer for about 6-8 minutes, until the moisture has mostly evaporated. You will need to peek under the lid to check, but try not to do this too often, or else a lot of the moisture will escape.
- Once the moisture from the coconut milk has mostly evaporated, turn off the heat, and let the rice continue to steam in the residual heat of the pot, with the lid on. If you can wait 15 minutes, that's ideal, but at this stage, it is ready to eat!
- Fluff up the coconut rice and scoop into a small bowl. Flip it onto a large plate.
- Slice the chicken breast and place it around the rice.
- Take a big scoop of the ginger spring onion sauce and slather it over the chicken.
- Dollop your favourite hot sauce on the side. I like to use sriracha or sambal oelek.
- Slice some cucumber as a refreshing side. Garnish with fresh coriander if you can be bothered... and enjoy!
Notes
For the ginger spring onion sauce:
It is important to place the spring onion on the bottom of the bowl and the ginger on the top, as ginger requires more heat to release all of it's aroma, and spring onion doesn't need as much. By leaving in these layers before pouring the oil, you'll get a more flavourful sauce, than if you stirred them together before adding the oil.
You can also add in a pinch of MSG or drizzle sesame oil to taste!
