Cooking time! 三杯鸡 (3 cup chicken)

Made this awesomeness with my wife last night. It's called sānbēijī, or "3 cup chicken." It gets its name from the 3 ingredients that are used to make the sauce. Without further ado, let's break this down!

We used:

• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into thin slices
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger root, cut into thin slices
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 cup rice wine (you can use mirin, sake, or any similar spirit. We used some Hmong rice wine given to me by a coworker)
• 1/2 cup sesame oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• A few leaves fresh basil

Start with the ginger root and the garlic in the sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce. Put it on medium heat and let it cook a little bit.

A light boil is a very good thing! We want the ginger and garlic to leach some of its flavor into the sauce. No need to go overboard, though. We don't want to cook off too much water just yet.

While the sauce was cooking, I sliced up the chicken. Thin slices are the order of the day today. They cook faster, and absorb more of the sauce.

Presto!

I waited a bit before adding the chicken to the sauce. We had rice cooking as well, and I didn't want this to be ready before the rice. Timing is everything, people! We wound up cooking the chicken on medium heat for about 10 minutes, reducing the heat and letting it simmer shortly thereafter.

Just before everything was done, I added the basil to the mixture, letting it cook for about 2-3 minutes. You don't want to over cook it, just get enough time for it to absorb some of the juices and soften up a wee bit.

And a little steamed broccoli brings us back to the first pic! It was salty, savory, and just the right amount of ginger flavor. Delicious! Total cook time was about 45 minutes or so. The longest part was cooking the rice. Everything else can be done while that works, so don't be afraid to overlap here and there.

Lessons learned:

1. Next time, use a wee bit less sauce. We had a little too much to work with for the meat. Might try 1/3 cup next time.
2. Lower heat earlier for the chicken, and cut into smaller pieces. Some of the chicken was a little dry by the time we ate it. A lower cooking temp for longer will help the chicken absorb more of the liquid and alleviate the dryness.
3. Might add more ground ginger next time to sauce. Seems like it could use a little bit of a boost.

Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of "Cooking with @ddrfr33k." I'll do these again as I experiment with new foodstuffs. Until next time, may your belly be full and your heart content!