Lately I have been in a cooking rut. After the holidays I swore I would cut back on making so much indulgent yet heavy food but alas, this left me without any inspiration. Vegetables just don’t excite me. I was flipping through a healthy foods cookbook and I saw a recipe for this Thai Chicken Fried Rice. It is not too bad on the caloric front (in spite of the word “fried” in the title) and while I cannot attest for the authenticity, it looked like it would be fun to try and a change from the usual Chinese Chicken Fried Rice.
The key to any stir fry/fried rice is to make sure that all your ingredients have been cut up before you start cooking. That way you can dump them in quickly and nothing will burn while you’re busy chopping.
First up were red peppers. The recipe called for red Thai peppers but since they don’t sell them in my supermarket I just ended up using red bell peppers.
Then some cilantro. I love cilantro, The Husband thinks it smells like death though. Sadly that rules out me making out most Latin American food for both of us.
Then some fresh basil. I know I should have picked off each leaf from the stem and tightly wrapped them in a nice little bundle and delicately cut them into ribbons but I couldn’t be bothered so I hacked at them like a maniac.
I started off by cooking my green onions. There was also half a red onion hanging around the fridge so I ended up chucking that in as well.
When the onions were done I took them out of the pan and cooked my chicken. I had taken two chicken breasts and sliced them thinly with a sharp knife. If you have problems slicing chicken finely put it in the freezer for a few minutes. It will stiffed up a bit and be easier to cut.
Once the chicken was cooked I added in some cooked basmati rice. If you’ve never tried basmati rice do give it a go. It is fragrant and good even plain. It is my go-to rice for all kinds of dishes.
The herbs, red pepper and onions then went back in.
For flavouring I added in a few tablespoons of oyster sauce and fish sauce. I just kept on tasting and adding more as needed. Since there is a lot of sodium in fish sauce I just added a touch of salt at the end. I had to buy a new bottle of fish sauce since The Husband threw away my last bottle by accident. He was cleaning out the fridge (by himself may I add. I married him for his cleaning skills) and opened it up and sniffed it. He thought it had gone bad and threw it away. Only later when I was looking for fish sauce and he told me what he had done did I enlighten him to the fact that fish sauce always smells funky. I wonder what it smells like when it really does go off.
Yum. This was good and very easy. It is also an excellent way of using up cooked chicken should you have some leftover from a roast chicken dinner. This could have used some heat and next time I am adding in some red chilli peppers. I think I like this much more than Chinese fried rice. The fresh herbs went really nicely in this and it is quite nice to find a recipe that uses basil that is not Italian.
