Chicken with broccoli in a brown sauce is my favorite go-to order from Chinese take out. But I prefer Chinese take out at home. It's hard to find a good one so I end up making it myself. It's basically a chicken with broccoli stir fry just like they do in the restaurants except adapted for a home kitchen. We're using soy sauce, oyster sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil all the flavors a Chinese restaurant is using, just doing it all at home. I'm gonna show you how to make homemade Chinese food as food as anywhere in hopes that you can save a few bucks this time of year.
INGREDIENTS
1 - 1 1/2 lbs of Chicken Breast, Sliced Thin
1-2 Heads of Broccoli, depending on the size
2 Scallions, chopped
1 1/2 Cups Chicken Stock
2 Cloves Garlic, Grated
1 Tablespoon of Honey
1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil
1/4 Soy Sauce, plus 1 tablespoon
2-3 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
1 Tablespoons Rice Wine Vinegar, plus 1 tablespoon
3 Tablespoons of Cornstarch, divided into 2 portions
3 Tablespoons of Water
2-3 tablespoons of canola oil
1 Cup of Sushi Rice
1 Cup of Water
DIRECTIONS
Chop up the broccoli into bite size bites. Just cut the florets off the stalk and then cut into halves or quarters.
Slice the chicken breast into thin slices against the grain. When the chicken gets a bit thicker, slice it, and the cut that slice in half to create equal sized steps.
Slice the scallions on an angle to make pretty cuts for garnish.
In a bowl, add the chicken, 2 tablespoons of cornstarch (leaving another 2 tablespoons to mix in before cooking), 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar. Mix up and let it marinate.
Get your rice on the stove. Measure out 1 cup of the sushi rice. Then rinse it under cold water to remove the excess starch. Add to a pot with 1 cup of water. Get it on the stove over high heat and bring it to a boil. Once boiling, give it a stir to loosen up the rice from sticking to each other and the lower it to a simmer and put the lid on. Cook that for 15 minutes, then remove it from the heat and let it steam for another 10-15 minutes. Let that hang while you prepare the rest of the meal.
In a bowl combine the chicken stock, the sesame oil, 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar, the oyster sauce, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, the grated garlic, half the scallions, and the honey. Stir to combine. Set aside.
To make the cornstarch slurry, stir in 1/4 cup of cornstarch into 1/4 cup of water and whisk it till there are no lumps.
Before cooking everything, add the remaining cornstarch to the chicken and mix well.
In a wide, heavy bottom pan, add 2-3 cups of water and bring it to a boil. You can season it with salt if you like. Then when boiling, add the broccoli and blanch it, stirring it around making sure everything gets cooked, for no more than 1-2 minutes. You want them to still be crunchy after this stage. Once they are bright green and slightly cooked, drain them and hold them off to the side. Drain the pan of all the water and then wipe it dry.
Add the same pan back to the heat and get it really hot again. Add 2-3 tablespoons of canola oil and when that is hot, start to cook the chicken in batches. Let it sit on one side to allow for some browning to build up on at least one side before starting to stir. Then toss it to around to sear the outside of the chicken. We don’t want to fully cook the chicken yet, it's going to see the heat again in a little. Get that chicken out of the pan so you can repeat the process to the rest of the chicken.
After all the chicken is par-cooked, drain out the oil and then dry the pan again.
Get the pan super hot before adding the sauce. When its hot add the sauce mixture to the pan, get it boiling right away. Then add the cornstarch slurry. Cook that until the sauce has slightly reduced but has thickened. If you add the vegetable and the chicken now, it will take too long to thicken the sauce because we don’t have the Btu’s of a Chinese wok stove to reduce the sauce as fast as they can. Reducing and thickening the sauce and the slurry now, before adding the vegetables, will help get around that problem (it's what happened to me in the video). This will help the sauce stick to the meat and vegetables easier.
When the sauce is nice a thick to your liking, you can add the chicken and the broccoli and just cook the chicken through and until the sauce coats the chicken and broccoli.
The rice should be done. With a fork just fluff it up. Ready to plate, top with some more scallions and serve.
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