Pineapple Fried Rice

Obviously graduate school has taken priority over keeping up with this blog, especially on top of having to teach an undergraduate chemistry lab. I'm finally back though! Plus, I'm still cooking and baking when I have the chance, and taking pictures of everything...I just haven't had the motivation to write about it all. I recently started organizing all of the photos I have on my camera and transferring them onto my computer, and boy, hopefully I'll eventually catch up because I have too many food pictures.

Anyways, on to the food!

I usually have leftover plain white rice. I have a handy rice cooker and make about twice as much as I will be eating the day I'm cooking it so I have leftovers the next day to make fried rice. This is pretty much another variation of my previous fried rice post, link here!...which gives you helpful tips on how to make fried rice and prevent it from getting soggy.

There's marinated pieces of chicken, zucchini, pineapple, and egg in this fried rice. I suggest making sure the chicken is well done before incorporating it into the rice. If you refer to my other fried rice recipe, it teaches you how to incorporate each ingredient (typically the order is eggs, meat, seasoning such as soy sauce, veggies/fruit).

Leftover white rice doesn't have to be boring!

Baked "Fried Chicken"

Yes, you can make fried chicken by using your oven! There is no extra fat or grease involved, and it's just as good as the greasy kind, but healthier!

You can coat your chicken with any type of recipe you like. I do a typical coating of flour mixed with some paprika and season salt, then the chicken is dipped in milk, lastly coated in a store bought extra crispy seasoned chicken fry mix. Layer your cookie sheet with foil with a rack on top so the extra oil/grease that falls naturally falls away from the chicken will be collected in the foil, and will help keep the chicken from sitting in its own fat. I baked it at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how large the pieces were. Most online recipes say to coat the outside of the skin with some butter or fat in the last coating process, but a healthier tip is about halfway through the baking process, "baste" the outside of the chicken with it's own grease so the outside can continue to "fry."

This oven fried chicken was served with white rice and a spinach salad. A little guilty, but mostly healthy!

I have a secret: I like my fried chicken with ketchup! Classy, right?

He Would be a Great Husband...

The title is actually a quote from my mom in reference to one of my guy friend's, Peter, who cooked both dishes in this blog post. He made the green onion pancakes and the crispy chicken nuggets from scratch! 

Green Onion Pancakes

I will be posting the green onion pancake recipe in a future blog post because I tried to make them when I came back from Austin...the key word is TRIED. Peter's are definitely better. Y'all should definitely check out his and Daphne's blog, Taiwan Om Nom, that they write together. All their recipes are centered around Taiwanese food.

Crispy Chicken Nuggets

The recipe for the crispy chicken nuggets is on Taiwan Om Nom as well. The link will take you specifically to that recipe! I definitely ate well when I visited Austin, and it was nice to have a home cooked meal on top of all the great restaurants I went to. So to all men out there: learn how to cook, it'll make you a great husband! Or at least find you a girlfriend.

This is the end of my Austin food series!

Korean Inspired Chicken

My next chicken dish is completely different from my last post even though I'm using the same cut of chicken, the chicken thigh. This time around, there is a longer wait time since I used a marinade for the chicken. I used a Korean BBQ Kalbi Marinade, typically used for pork short ribs. The chicken was marinaded in this sauce overnight before baking. The chicken was baked for about 45 mins at 350 degrees, with flipping the chicken halfway through.

Alongside the chicken, I made some steamed white rice and stir-fried veggies. The zucchini and baby bella mushrooms were seasoned with just salt and pepper and stir-fried in some olive oil. Simple, tasty, and healthy.

I also had a side of kimchi. The easiest comparison I can make is that kimchi is similar to pickles except it's more spicy than sour, and instead of using cucumber, the main ingredient is napa cabbage (chinese cabbage). The kimchi I had was napa cabbage that was pickled/fermented with ginger, green onions, garlic, salt, and chili pepper.

Two different brands of kimchi.

Here is the complete dish with the chicken!

Simplicity

I recently bought some chicken thighs at the grocery store that were on sale, $0.77 per pound! So the next two posts will consist of two different chicken dishes. I wanted something simple and easy to make, but still tasted like it took a lot of effort to prepare.

All I did was take some chicken thighs and generously sprinkle lemon pepper seasoning and extra black pepper all over the chicken. I opted to not add any extra oil to them because chicken thighs are the more fatty part of the chicken, and the skin was also still on it. I baked the chicken skin side up for about 30-40 mins at 375 degrees until the skin was a nice crispy golden brown. Since the extra fat should melt right off of the chicken as it's baking, I put the chicken on some foil with the edges turned up so that the foil catches any of the extra liquid. All of this is put on a cookie sheet so everything was easier to transfer in and out of the oven.

Since the chicken is a dark meat, I decided to serve it alongside some romaine lettuce with sun dried tomato vinaigrette to balance the fattiness of the dark meat and the lightness of the salad.

This meal tastes great the next day as well. I took some leftovers for lunch at work and it was really satisfying. I do recommend though that any time you pack a salad, to pack the salad separately from the dressing so it does not become soggy.