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Monday, November 9, 2009

Easy Sesame Chicken


Everyone has those dishes that are easy, delicious, and company-worthy. This is one of my dishes. It doesn't take a really long time to cook. You probably have most of those things in your house already (honey, chicken, onions, rice). If you do it well (and I will tell you what you need to do to do it well), this dish is a hit. Many people love this dish when I make it. And it will look like the photo above, which I did not take. I'm not that good of a photographer.

Sesame Chicken
Ingredients
1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp crushed red pepper (or more or less, depending on how hot you like it. I like it mildly spicy)
2-4 chicken breasts
Sesame oil
Vegetable oil
1 yellow onion
*1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
*1/2 cup honey
sesame seeds
1 green bell pepper
1 bunch green onions
Any other veggies you want (broccoli, carrots, bok choy, etc)
*These are for the sauce. You can use more or less, but keep the ratio 1 to 1. The original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of each, which wasn't enough for me. 1/2 cup will make it saucy but not too sweet.

1. Put the chicken in a plastic Ziploc back and pound it. It doesn't matter how thin you cut it, this is more about making it a uniform thickness so all of the chicken cooks evenly and at the same time. Cut it into small chunks.
2. Mix the flour, sesame seeds, pepper, salt, and red pepper in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Heat 3 tbs of vegetable oil. Add to it enough sesame oil to 1/2"-1" deep in the pan. Heat all of the oil on high.
4. Coat the chicken in the flour mixture. Get it really coated, because some of the flour will fall off in the frying process. Once the oil is thoroughly heated, brown the chicken. You want it golden to medium brown. Not too light in color though, you want it crispy. Once browned, remove the chicken.
5. Saute the onions and peppers and veggies until done. I like mine a little firm still, but if you like them soft cook them as long as you want. They will cook a little more in the next step, but not much.
6. Add the chicken back to the pan. In a separate bowl, mix the teriyaki sauce, honey, and some sesame seeds together. Add the sauce to the pan. Toss more sesame seeds on top. Toss in green onions.

Voila! Sesame chicken!

NOTE: This is a really flexible recipe. Feel free to use more or less oil, or less sauce. Use any veggies you want, squash, zucchini, broccoli, onions, bell peppers, carrots. Any kind of firm veggie, because it'll cook well and take on the flavor of the sauce. If you like more sesame flavor, use more sesame oil and more sesame seeds. If you like it really spicy, go crazy with the red pepper. It's a recipe that you can tweak to your own liking.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Sesame chicken is one of my favs. I will give this a try. Thanks for sharing.

Liz said...

Yum!

Stephanie said...

OK. Made it tonight for dinner. The fam loved it. Thanks! I think next time though, I'll use less teriyaki and more honey.

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