I know you are sick and tired of bland and tough skinless boneless chicken breast as your protein. But you don’t really know what to do with this healthy option besides pan fry and baked.
It is your lucky day today, because this recipe really will change your view of this lean cut of chicken.
The chicken breast will stay juicy and tender, thanks to the method of poaching.
Poaching is nothing fancy, but low heat slow cook. All you need to do is to put 3 pieces of chicken breasts into a pot of cold water, bring it to just shy of a boil, and lower heat to low. Make sure there is barely any visible bubbles from the pot, water is barely to the boiling point. 20 minutes later, kill the heat, let the chicken breasts slightly cool in the water before slicing. That’s all to the secret. I had some asparagus stem left over from another dish, so I threw these into the pot as well for the hint of freshness taste. Also I poached 5 breasts, only used 3 for this dish, the other 2 were saved for another fabulous recipe.
Arrange the sliced chicken breast nice and neat onto a platter, top with amazing hometown sauce. I promise you, everyone will be so amazed and asking for the recipe! Only you and I know how easy this dish really is.
A little ninja tip: when you take the chicken slices, grab as much of the topping as you could, you will LOVE it!
The other day, I came across the amazing burdock root at an Asian market. This fresh produce had a green sign right next to it, outlining the awesome benefits of the weirdly looking sticks.
The benefit card was literally full:
Blood purifying
Cancer fighting
Treat cold
Soothe joint pain
Improve skin condition
Lower blood pressure
Fight diabetes
Ease stomach and intestinal complaints
Treat gout and bladder infection…
The list goes on and on… me being me, this immediately caught my attention. I started my little research tast rigth away. At the end of the day, these 2 roughly 4 ft long sticks cost less than 2 dollars, so I got them anyways.
After I got home, I researched more, compared the benefits and potential risks, and was convinced I shall give it a try. After all, burdock is one of the Chinese medicine ingredients, well known for the medical benefits.
Most of my little research touched on burdock tea one way or the other, and seems like a quite feasible and simple way to try burdock at home without purchasing supplements. So this is what I decided to do.
I snapped the burdock roots into manageable lengths, about 1 ft long each. I scrubbed it thoroughly under cold running water. The root would be visibly lighter in color.
I thinly sliced the root at an diagonal to gain more surface area on the cuts, because I feel this way it would help release all the goodness inside burdock roots. Of course, I didn’t have a mandoline slicer on hand, so I showed off my knife skills a little. Side note, the mannual slicing session gave me enough reason to invest in a small mandoline, which really is just the single slot on the box grater.
Being a newbie, I couldn’t wait. I boiled a small pot of water on the stove. Cut off the heat once the water came to a rapid boil. I threw a bunch of burdock slices into the hot water and put the lid back on to let it steep.
Now, for the rest of the burdock slices, I laid them onto 2 of my largest baking sheets in 1 single layer, as much as I could. I popped the baking sheets into a 200F oven for 3 hours, to slowly dehydrate them for storage.
Of course, I went on this journey to look for a mandoline slicer. I initially had the fancy triangle slicer in mind. Something like this:
It’s so funny, when you know exactly what you want, but are convinced that some cheaper stores would have it, you could never find it, just because you wanted to save a few dollars. So I ended up getting one of these for next time.
When I got back from the store, the burdock tea was completely cooled. I couldn’t wait to serve myself a cup.
The tea is slightly brown in color, very light in my case since I used fresh burdock root slices. However, the subtle sweet flavor and amazing aroma makes it hard to believe I was enjoying something good for my health! A lot of people suggest adding honey or agave as sweetener, I personally think the tea as is, is perfection, nothing else is needed. Unless you want to add some other ingredients that is beneficial for something else and needed some sweetener to offset the strong taste.
When the rest of the burdock slices were done dehydrating in the oven, I took them out and let them completely cool. Into a large plastic bag they go, I will enjoy these amazing burdock root slices for a little while and see if they really have a noticeable impact on my health.
I know it’s hard to believe, but we had about 30 home made dumplings left over from last night. So, this morning, I pan fried these and turned them into another awesome breakfast dish.
These are what we had from last night, simple boiled chives, eggs and shrimpdumplings.
Ignore that chili sauce… I think someone was savoring a few for mid night snack..So these dumplings were in the fridge over night, nice and cool, and they won’t stick to each other.
In a medium size cast iron pan, oil the bottom generously and heat on medium high heat for a few minutes to make sure the pan is nice and hot.
Carefully put the dumplings into the pan without crowding them.
Leave them alone for 2 to 3 minutes to allow the golden crust to form at the bottom of each dumpling. Don’t worry about which face these dumplings fall onto at first, they will get browned on all sides anyway.
Once the first side is browned, the dumplings will naturally release themselves from the bottom of the pan, just to be extra safe, go in with a thin flat spatula to scrape them off the pan carefully and flip them to another side.
Allow 2 to 3 minutes each side to brown, dish up and serve with my Signature Spicy Sauce.
Yep, only 2 ingredients. And it’s so good, you and your kids would love this one.
What are the 2 secret ingredients?
1 box of Jiffy corn muffin mix
1 can of cream style corn
Method:
In a medium bowl, mix the 2 ingredients together until there is no visible dry lumps.
Heat up a nonstick pan or a cast iron pan on medium heat, use butter or oil of your choice to coat the bottom of the pan. I used a ladle to drop about 1/2 cup of batter onto the pan. My pan fits 3 pancakes at a time.
Let the pancakes cook for about a minute until the edges are ever so slightly crisping up. Don’t wait for bubbles to form on the top of the pancakes like you would normally do. This pancake batter is quite thick, if you wait for bubbles to form, the bottom would be over cooked.
Flip the pancakes one by one when the bottom is nicely golden brown.
Love how you can see the corn kernels peaking through the pancakes. Give the 2nd side about 30 seconds to cook.
Dish up and serve warm. Everyone would love it! With this recipe, it makes exactly 6 pancakes, perfect amount for a family, along with some other fixings.
This one is extremely easy, that it can hardly be called a recipe. But I promise you, you will fall in love, and change your pancake eating experience towards healthier direction – you won’t miss the syrup. Don’t believe it? Give it a try!
Ingredients:
However you prefer to make your basic pancake recipe. In this particular case, I used store bought pancake mix.
1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk. I had leftovers from my amazing Almond Flour Chocolate Leches Cake, so I used the leftover sweetened condensed milk in this recipe.
1 knob of butter for frying.
Method:
Prepare your pancake batter as you normally would, or per the instruction on the pancake mix packaging. Add the sweetened condensed milk into the batter. No need to alter the pancake mix to liquid ratio because the texture of sweetened condensed milk is quite thick and similar to pancake batter. Hence it is such an easy recipe. Mix the batter well to evenly distribute the milk.
Make your pancake as your normally would. Serve and savor the subtle but unmistakable sweetness! You won’t miss your syrup!
This dish will change your view about healthy brown rice. I know you are aware that you should probably eat more brown rice and ditch white rice, but you don’t like the toughness and slightly interesting smell brown rice comes with. But give this recipe a try, you will not only start loving brown rice, you are also consuming spinach without even noticing you are eating extra healthy. Win-win!
Method:
2 cups of uncooked brown rice
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 TBSP vegetable oil
1 pinch of salt
3 cups of stock, whatever you had on hand. I had leftover soup from my Simple Tum Yum Pork Ribs, so I happily used that for flavor. If you don’t have any stock on hand, don’t worry, just dissolve a chicken bullion cube into 4 cups of water, that will do just fine.
1 cup of water, liquid should add up to 4 cups. So you can play with the math here between water and stock, another level of freedom!
1 small bundle of fresh spinach, thoroughly washed and thinly sliced, stalk and leaves.
Method:
Heat up the oil in a medium soup pot on medium heat, the pot should be large enough to comfortably hold the 4 cups of liquid and rice. Another pro tip is, if your soup pot has a glass lid, that’s ideal, that way you can see how done is your rice and if the liquid is evaporated enough without burning the rice.
Add garlic and brown rice. Stir gently until the rice is fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add all the liquid and salt, combine well, bring it to a boil.
Lid on, lower heat to low right away, and let the rice simmer for about 45 minutes to 50 minutes.
Keep the lid on, absolutely no peeking at this point. Kill the heat and let rice steam for another 10 minutes.
Once rice is done steaming, open the lid and mix in all the spinach, the residual heat from the rice will cook the spinach instantly.
Give this amazing way to cook brown rice and boost your vegetable intake. The brown rice is so soft and tender, it may just pass as white rice!
Y’all, this one is one of my childhood favorite! If you can take spices, you will love this one! It’s super appetizing, you can serve it as an appetizer or a vegetable main dish. You can leave out the spicy oil and make it more kid friendly.
Ingredients:
1 American egg plant, or 2 Japanese eggplants. I prefer the skinnier version Japanese eggplants for this dish because it’s tenderer and the skin is softer too. But all I had was 1 ginormous eggplant, so I used that one.
about 4 TBSP of my signature spicy sauce. Leave out the spices if you prefer mild version.
2 green onions, thinly sliced
Method:
Cut the eggplant into roughly 2 inch slices. Put eggplant slices into a large bowl and steam in a steamer (if you have one) for 10 minutes.
If you don’t have a steamer, do what I did, put a wire tray, or 3 aluminum foil balls at the bottom of the large pot, fill water to about 1 inch deep – you only need about 10 minutes anyways. Put your eggplant bowl on top of the wire tray or aluminum foil balls.
Once eggplant is cooked, kill the heat, take the bowl out carefully to cool. Pull the eggplant into strips, or cut into strips. If you are using Japanese eggplant, you will be able to pull it into strips, I find the large American eggplant it is harder to pull, you can cut with a knife though.
Put all egg plant strips back into the bowl, after dumping out the liquid accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. Drizzle with my signature spicy sauce, top with green onion. Mix well and serve!
Another simple yet scrumptious dish. Super easy to make and very satisfying.
Ingredients:
1 bundle of asparagus
1 yellow bell pepper, use yellow for color contrast. Red or orange would do too.
4 slices of fresh ginger
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
Method:
Prepare asparagus properly. By properly, I mean you have to snap each asparagus towards the bottom part, so the tough portion of the asparagus would naturally fall off. I can not stress enough, a tough bite of asparagus REALLY kills this dish. But don’t worry, you are not really wasting anything. Save the tough pieces in a Ziploc bag in the fridge for next soup you make. They add a nice refreshing flavor to the soup.
Cut the asparagus at a diagonal, roughly 2 inches long. Clean the bell pepper, remove seeds and the white membrane inside. Cut into thin strips, this way asparagus and the bell pepper will be roughly the same size.
Thinly slice your ginger and mince garlic. Then you are ready for the fire.
Pan on fire, medium high heat, about 2 TBSP vegetable oil into the pan, heat up the oil for about a minute. In goes the ginger slices and garlic. Move the aromatics around for about 30 seconds without burning the garlic.
In goes the prepared asparagus and bell pepper. Stir fry for about 3 minutes. You don’t want to overcook the vegetables, all you want is slightly soften them, that way the vegetables preserve the nutrients and the crisp texture.
Add salt, pepper and ground cumin, and mix well. Kill the heat and dish up. The cumin is the secret ingredient here, it gives the dish a little extra oomph, and also a bit of a smoky and almost fajita like taste. It’s quite nice.
This one you guys, is for sure a keeper! It’s so incredibly easy yet tasty! Best of all, it’s pretty much all hands off cooking, meaning you can do something else, or absolutely nothing…All you need is a bit of planning, because over night marinating is the best. If you are in a pinch of time, a few hours will do just fine.
Ingredients:
Chicken pieces, skin on, bone in. I had a whole chicken cut up by the butcher, and used the breast pieces the other night for easy baked chicken. So I am using the rest of the chicken for this recipe.
1/2 cup of low sodium soy sauce
3 TBSP Hoisin sauce
3 TBSP oyster sauce
1 TBSP sugar
2 TBSP Sriracha sauce, leave it out if you don’t like spicies, add more if you like more kick, totally up to you, or use your favorite hot sauce
3 cloves of garlic, grated into paste with a grater
1 green onion, thinly sliced, needed on day 2, for garnish, optional
1 tsp toasted white sesame seeds, for garnish, optional
Method:
Clean chicken pieces, and lightly score each piece 2 to 3 times all the way to the bone. This helps the marinade to penetrate the meat. Add chicken to a stainless steel bowl, or a glass bowl, or a large plastic bag for marinating.
Add all ingredients except for green onions and sesame seeds to the chicken container. Massage well to evenly coat chicken pieces. Leave chicken in the fridge for marinating over night if you can.
When it’s ready to cook, pre-heat oven to 375 F. Line a baking dish with foil for easy cleaning up. Arrange chicken pieces onto the baking dish, without overlapping.
Bake in the oven for 15 minutes and lower the heat to 350F. Bake for another 25 minutes to ensure chicken is baked all the way through.
Remove chicken from oven, let it rest for about 10 minutes.
Dish up chicken pieces, pour the pan juice over chicken pieces, top with green onion pieces and toasted white sesame seeds and impress everyone!
If you like Chinese style salt and pepper anything, you will love this one too. And, it is amazingly simple to make at home, and it sure will impress!
Ingredients:
3 large fresh squids, cleaned
2 green onions
1 TBSP salt
1 TBSP freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup corn starch
3 Thai chili pepper thinly sliced
4 cups of vegetable oil
Method:
Lightly score the inside of the cleaned squid body in a criss-cross pattern. Try not to cut all the way through.
Then cut the squid body into bite size pieces, about 1 inch x 2 inch pieces.
Cut squid tentacles into roughly 2 inch long pieces, or as desired. Lay all squid pieces on a paper towel to dry the moisture. Mix salt and pepper in a small bowl and generously sprinkle the squid pieces with salt and pepper mixture.
In another small bowl, put corn starch for coating each squid piece. In a medium pot, heat up vegetable oil to a gentle roll. Test the oil with a small piece of squid.
Coat each piece of squid generously with corn starch, shake off excess and fry until golden brown, about 3 minutes.
Lay fried squid on a wire rack lined with paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and pepper again.
It would be great as is, but if you really want to kick it up a notch, in a large pan, with about 1 tsp oil, fry the green onions and Thai chili peppers till fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add all the fried squid pieces toss to coat and add another sprinkle of salt and pepper mixture. Dish up and serve!
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Welcome to my blog!
I am an American Chinese, mother of 3 wonderful children, senior engineer, but passionate about cooking, arts and crafts, travel, gardening, sewing…
I value honesty, sincerity, simple happiness in family and friendship. Life has its surprises all the time, the only thing we could do, is to keep a positive attitude, welcome every spin with a smile and make the best out of any situation.
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