One Poached Chicken, 3 Effortless Meals
Shacha Chicken Salad Sandwiches and Chicken Glass Noodle Soup
Happy Tuesday! Hope you all had a great start to your week! I sent a newsletter out on Sunday announcing a little Le Creuset giveaway and all the comments have been so so sweet! I’ve been sharing recipes on the internet for about 8 years I remember how very early on it felt like I was just sending a message out into an abyss and I was never sure if there was anyone on the receiving end. I still feel like that sometimes, so it’s so nice to hear from you and learn what recipes have resonated and found a home in your meal rotations! And your recipe suggestions have been so helpful! So far I’m hearing a want for more shareable dinner party food, one pot meals, meal prep ideas, easy desserts, more buns of the month, and classic Chinese comfort meals. I love all these things and will keep working on these recipes! Thank you for the kind words and if you missed the giveaway, you can still enter by commenting and I’ll pick the winner on Friday morning!
A Sunday Giveaway!
Hello hello! Happy Sunday and Happy Easter if you’re celebrating too 🥚 There’s no egg hunt on our agenda today but Reuben and I are preparing a homemade spread of smoked fish and sourdough bagels with all the fixings for our friends. I gotta run back and tend to my bagel dough soon but before I go I wanted to share this giveaway with you!
For this week’s recipes (there’s two!), they originate from a tried and true comfort meal in our house. My grandma’s poached chicken, it’s a Chinese-style chicken with a name (bak chit gai) that translates to white boiled chicken or white cut chicken. Not the most appetizing name but it was a staple at my grandparents house and is so delicious! The process is so easy, simply simmering chicken with the three G’s: ginger, garlic, and green onions. The result is super tender meat and rich chicken broth.
I’ve been on a pretty regular every other week schedule of making this at the start of the week and then using the leftover chicken and broth for more meals. It makes a great Sunday night dinner. The original recipe calls for chicken quarters for ease, but lately I’ve been simmering a whole chicken instead. A whole chicken tends to be cheaper than precut portions and I like the versatilely of the mix of dark and white meat for future meals. I don’t love leftovers in the traditional sense, it’s hard for me to eat the same thing 2 or three times in a row, but do I love to bring new life to and repurpose leftover ingredients.
If you decide to make the recipe below with a whole chicken, try to find a 5 lb chicken, still give the skin a nice scrub with salt, and simmer it for more like 55 to 65 minutes to make sure the chicken is fully cooked through. Combine the chicken, water (you want enough to nearly fully cover the chicken), and aromatics in a big pot before bringing it up to a boil. It’s safer that way so the water can get into the cavity of the chicken. From there the recipe is the same! Make some chicken fat rice with the broth, and serve it with some smashed cucumber salad, and party pickles from Chinese Enough!
Poached Chicken and Rice with Soy and Vinegar Green Onion Sauce
Sunday family lunches at my grandparents’ house were a regular occurrence growing up. They normally coincided with bi sun, which was a ceremony my Taoist grandmother practiced to pay respects to our ancestors. I remember the smell of incense burning, the sun shine through the kitchen windows, and the smell of soup and chicken simmer on the stove. A plat…
Chicken Glass Noodle Soup
Since our household only consists of my husband and I, a whole chicken can last us a few meals and there’s also about 8 cups of chicken broth at our disposal. I like to season the broth with salt to taste and warm up a mug at a time in the mornings to start the day. It’s nice to sip on something savory and nourishing before coffee. For a more robust meal, a chicken noodle soup is a very obvious next step to take with your leftover broth and chicken. This noodle soup is fortified with a little more ginger and garlic to highlight those flavors. Once the broth is hot you toss in your chicken and some handfuls of spinach or tender leaves of young bok choy. Watercress or Chinese spinach would be delicious thrown in too.
For noodles, I opted for glass noodles. I know them as fun see but sometimes they are labeled as mung bean vermicelli noodles or bean thread noodles. These are some of the best noodles and don’t require boiling, instead a soak in hot water for a few minutes will plump them right up. The noodles continue to soak up moisture so only mix the noodles with the soup when you’re ready to serve!
serves 2 to 3
8 cups of chicken broth
1” piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves
8 to 12 oz of shredded leftover poached chicken
3 big handfuls of spinach
2 to 3 bundles of fun see/bean thread noodles
thinly sliced green onions for topping
In a large pot combine broth, ginger, and garlic and bring to a simmer over medium heat, adjust heat as needed to maintain a simmer. Allow it to simmer for 15 to 30 minutes, until it tastes stronger of ginger and garlic. Add a little bit of salt per your taste and then add chicken and spinach and stir to combine. Once the spinach is wilted and the chicken is warmed through you can serve.
Place the noodles in a medium heatproof bowl and pour in hot, just boiled water until nearly covered. Loosen the noodles with a chopstick and let them sit until plump and hydrated, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain the water and divide the noodles into individual bowls. Top each bowl with spinach, chicken, green onions, and broth and serve immediately.
Shacha Chicken Salad Sandwiches
After 2 bowls of cozy chicken noodle soup, there’s normally just the right of amount of chicken breast left to make a batch of this Shacha Chicken Salad, which might be one of the best chicken salads I’ve ever had. The secret sauce, quite literally, is shacha aioli. I first shared the aioli recipe as part of the Garlic Chive and Sesame Bread and I’m still very much obsessed with it. It combines my love of mayo and shacha. Shacha is sometimes referred to as Chinese BBQ sauce, but I don’t find that very accurate. It’s a common dipping sauce made from dried seafood, chilis, and aromatics. I use it as the flavor base for my beloved Shacha Roast Chicken (which you could also uses to make this recipe!) in Chinese Enough. Obviously shacha tastes amazing with chicken.
The aioli whips together with the help of a stick blender and consists of egg, shrimp paste, citrus, ginger, garlic, and avocado oil. It is SO FLAVORFUL. Delicious with bread, for dipping crispy potatoes, mixed with rice, and folding into shredded chicken and loads of celery for a memorable chicken salad.
For a more casual snack, I’ll eat the chicken salad with some crackers or tortilla chips, but for a statement sandwich moment I’ll make a chicken salad sandwich with some dutch crunch, avocado, fried shallots, lots of iceberg, and an extra smear of aioli for good measure!
Shacha Aioli
Makes about 12 ounces
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
27g / 1 tbsp shrimp paste
1/2 tsp coarse salt
Juice 1 lemon or lime
2 cloves garlic
1” piece of ginger
227g / 1 cup avocado oil
In a deli container or sturdy bowl, combine the egg, yolk, shrimp paste, salt, lemon juice, garlic ginger, and avocado oil (make sure to add this last so it is on top), and blend with a stick blender until smooth and creamy, about 30 seconds. Use immediately or store in an airtight container in the fridge for a week.
Shacha Chicken Salad
10oz leftover poached chicken breast, shredded
3/4 cup to 1 cup shacha aioli
1 1/4 cup celery, finely diced
4 green onion, thinly sliced
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp black pepper
pinch of salt, to taste
In a large bowl, mix to combine chicken, aioli, celery, green onion, rice vinegar, sesame oil, black pepper, and salt. Taste and adjust to your liking. Chill in the fridge until ready to serve!
Olive and I are wishing you a great week!
Shacha aioli is everything I didn’t know I needed
I love this whole post because I also don’t love leftovers but I do like using something I cooked earlier in the week for some other kind of meal. Is there a brand of shrimp paste that you recommend?