Thurs Night Dinner – SWMO Cashew Chicken
Ingredients:
for the Cashew Chicken: Chicken breasts cut into pieces, flour, milk & egg & Vegetable Oil for frying
for the Rice: Minute Rice, water
for the sauce: water, chicken bouillon cubes, butter, cornstarch, soy sauce
optional toppings: Cashews, sliced scallions
Getting the assembly line ready for the chicken breading, although PC suggested I put the flour in a large plastic baggie and coat the chicken that way, MUCH easier! plus less messy!
Measuring the rice. For 4 servings of rice I used 2 cups to 1 3/4 cups water. Once the water comes to a boil, dump the rice in. Place a lid on the rice for 5 minutes, then remove from heat and wait until it absorbs all the water. The use a fork to fluff it.
Rice is easy, put a lid on and forgetaboutit! 🙂
When preparing the chicken, after it is cut into chunks you put it in an egg bath that is 1 egg to 1/4 cup milk. Wisk those together.
Cracking the egg 🙂
Wisking the egg & milk together.
Your mixture will look like this.
Cut the chicken in bite size pieces.
After the chicken is cut up into bite size pieces, dredge it in the milk/egg bath.
Then drop it into the flour. If you use the bag method, place a few pieces in there, shake it up, a few more pieces, shake, you get the idea. Other wise you’ll wind up with a horrible mess!
Pour the vegetable oil into a pan and heat it on the stove. It gets extremely hot so be careful not to burn yourself… IT HURTS 🙂 not speaking from personal experience or anything.
Use a test piece of chicken to see if your oil is hot. If it bubbles around it, it is, if the chicken just sits there, let the oil heat up more before dropping anymore in.
Be sure not to over-crowd your pan. It will reduce the heat of the oil and cause it to take longer for the chicken to fry up.
After the chicken turns a golden brown take it out of the oil and put it on a paper towel lined plate. That helps absorb some of the grease. Also right out of the oil, salt it (and I’m not a big user of salt but trust me, it makes all the difference in the world).
Now for the sauce:
1 3/4 cups of water. To that add 2 chicken bouillon cubes.
2 tbsp of corn starch. (this is your thickening agent)
Make sure you are wisking this. It’s good to have it over medium to medium high heat. Don’t get it to hot though.
Then add 1 tbsp soy sauce.
and 1 tbsp Butter
Then keep wisking until it thickens up. It should have the consistency of gravy for mashed potatoes and gravy as a comparison.
Now pile your rice on your plate. Then use additional soy sauce if preferred (it’s liquid salt basically). The top with your chicken. The dredge in your sauce. Now here is where you put the cashew nuts and scallions, we didn’t have any so we ate with out it.
Bon Appetit (yes that’s not Chinese but it’s all I know)
Peace, Love & Awesome Chinese Food (IMO)
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMM… This stuff is Awesome!!!!!!!!! I loved it!!
Be carefull though you keep making me this goooooood food and ima get fat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =P
Love You!!!!
yummy!!! this looks delish!
Oh yum, I am coming to your house for dinner hahahaha
Yummy! I might have to make that! 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Oh this looks so yummy!!!
Looks great but waaay more steps than I can handle. I'm lazy. I appreciated how much care and what detailed steps you went through in the tutorial though. Thanks.
You're making me hungry! Looks delish.
Yours looks similar to what we have here in the Pacific Northwest. I've never seen Cashew Chicken with “grilled chicken”.