Week 7 - Braising

The Week 7 challenge came up as braising, and while I knew it was a repeat of a challenge I'd done in a previous year, I wasn't unhappy about that because I remembered that experimenting with braising recipes was something I had enjoyed. Of course, that's probably because I was thinking about the beer and onion braised chicken carbonnade I made in 2014, which was actually for the Belgian challenge. That was the first time I had really intentionally braised anything, and it became the first of many, as I discovered I really liked how the dishes came out. For the actual braising challenge, I had done a Korean braised tofu that was part of our regular rotation, so not really an experiment but still a great dish.

Three cup chicken and bok choy

For this challenge, I looked around for a while for something that would work for our family of three, and once I stumbled upon three cup chicken (san bei ji), I knew that had to be it. I've always been intrigued by three cup chicken, named for its focus on three main flavors - sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine, and although I've still never been able to try three cup chicken from any Taiwanese restaurant, I hoped that whatever came out of our kitchen would be a good approximation of it. The recipe I found on The Woks of Life looked amazing, so I figured that would be a good starting place.

Ingredients:

I followed the recipe for the most part, and I actually measured things here to try to get the proportions right. Of course, we made some adaptations, most notably substituting chicken thighs for chicken wings since that worked better for our little one, and omitting the red chili in the aromatics so it wasn't too spicy for baby B.


- 1 tbsp sesame oil ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.30)
- about 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 6 cloves of garlic, chopped ($0.33)
- about 1.5 lb boneless chicken thighs ($7.60)
- 1/4 cup warm water ($0)
- 1/4 cup shaoxing wine ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce ($0.15)
- 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.10)
- 1 small batch of scallions, chopped ($0.99) *

* We intended to use both Thai basil and scallions, but neither Wegmans nor Whole Foods carried Thai basil when we visited. I probably should have known that since Whole Foods through Amazon didn't have Thai basil as an option to buy, but I thought I had remembered seeing it at Wegmans before. Alas, I was wrong, and we ended up with no Thai basil, which we think would have been great in the dish.

The chicken portion of dinner cost approximately $10.37, and when combined with our second dish (bok choy with garlic) and rice, the total was about $13.38. We didn't have any leftovers, but still not a bad price for dinner for three. The chicken thighs were the bulk of that price, but if we made this again with chicken, I'd probably just defrost some boneless skinless chicken breasts, which would drop the price by a few dollars. The original used wings, and I thought the boneless flavor equivalent would probably be chicken thighs, but prepping those fatty chicken thighs was no fun and I don't really want to do it next time when chicken breasts would work just fine.

Three cup tofu experiment

Since the time we made this for the challenge, we've used the same recipe but made it with tofu instead and some of our modifications, adding an extra tbsp of sesame oil with the soy sauce and wine, adding a bell pepper and an onion, and using basil (regular basil, not Thai basil since we still haven't gotten a hold of that, but the internet was right and regular basil worked just fine). The total for the three cup tofu was a little over $8. It was so delicious that this may be the way we do it more often in the future!

Steps:

I generally stuck to the recipe for the steps as well to try to make this as accurate as possible, since I couldn't use any memories of the dish or its flavors as my guide. The steps were:

1. Heat wok over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, ginger, and garlic. Stir the ginger and garlic in the oil for a few minutes until fragrant.

2. Add chicken and stir-fry until mostly cooked. [Note that the recipe raised the heat to high here, but our medium seemed to be pretty high, so we just left it where it was. Next time, would probably use a slightly lower heat on the aromatics and then raise it.]


3. Add 1/4 cup warm water, 1/4 cup shaoxing wine, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce, and 2 tsp sugar. Stir so that all the chicken is well-coated and covered with the sauce. [Note: I would add another tbsp of sesame oil here, since that flavor was mostly overpowered at the end without it.]

4. Cover the wok and reduce heat to medium low, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes.

5. Remove cover and add scallions. Mix well. Turn the heat up to reduce the sauce, stirring the chicken the whole time so it doesn't burn. [Our sauce was almost completely reduced already, so this step did not take very long.] Add chopped up basil and remove from heat.


The actual cooking didn't take that long here, and the steps were simple to follow. As alluded to earlier, the thing that took the longest was the chicken thighs prep, cutting off the fat and slicing the meat into chunks. Not sure how it took the better part of an hour to do, other than the fact that I don't do it very often, plus these were really, really fatty chicken thighs.

Conclusion:

Three cup tofu going into the family cookbook...
We really liked the way this turned out. Is it like the three cup chicken you'd find in a Taiwanese restaurant or home kitchen? No idea, but it tasted good to us. The strongest flavor in the end was the soy sauce, which made the dish a little on the salty side, but we knew it could be worse in the sodium department considering this was the day after our falafel mix experiment. Even with all the soy sauce, it still didn't taste as salty as the falafel. The clean and light-tasting bok choy sautéed with garlic on the side was the perfect thing to offset any saltiness, and together it all worked really well. As mentioned before, we made this again with a couple of tweaks (substituting tofu, adding a little extra sesame oil, basil, bell peppers and onions), and are so happy to have another dish to add to the repertoire!