Thurs Night Dinner – SWMO Cashew Chicken

I’m not sure about where you live, but in our part of the country, when you say Cashew Chicken it means fried pieces of chicken over rice with cashew nuts, sauce & scallions. I’ve been to other places and go to order Chinese food and have a hard time… usually it is grilled chicken of sorts, with rice and lots of vegetables and a sauce and some cashew nuts. There is a HUGE difference! I’ve only found our type in around here. PC said down in Kentucky they got close, but I’m not buying it :). So last night we decided that we wanted some good ole Cashew Chicken. We could have stopped at the restaurant and brought it home, but I felt like cooking so we ran to the store, picked up a few ingredients we didn’t have and went home and made dinner. This isn’t something we have a lot but it’s excellent! We took lots of pics to show you the recipe. I left my tripod at our house and we were at my parents so PC was in charge of the photos 🙂

(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)