One Pot Honey and Soy Chicken Rice

The last time I was in Singapore, I had the most incredible chicken rice. And usually if you are making it the traditional way, it would take hours. But I'm going to show you a shortcut version using one pot. It's also very family-friendly because I've got lots of honey and soy in it. So let's start with some honey in a bowl. To that, I'm going to add about four tablespoons of soy sauce. I'm using a light soy sauce. Honey, soy always go so nicely with chicken. And it's always just a crowd pleaser. So it's going to go nicely in this one pot chicken rice. We'll give that a quick stir just to dissolve that honey. I'll also add a good amount of white pepper. And this is our marinade slash sauce. So I'm going to add half of this to our chicken. I'm using chicken thigh. There's so much flavor in the chicken thigh and it doesn't dry out as it cooks. And we'll add half of that and the rest we're going to drizzle over in a moment. We'll grab a spoon and just give that a mix. Now, ideally, you want to allow this to marinate for a couple of hours or you can do this the night before. Okay, that looks great. Now I've got a heavy base casserole dish. I like to use a heavy base casserole dish like this because it's going to hold all that lovely heat. It's also going to ensure the rice and chicken cooks evenly. I'm using some peanut oil. So we'll add, oh, let's say about one tablespoon or so. We want this to be really hot because we want to sear off our chicken and get some color. Now, because there is honey there, it will sear off very fast. So we'll add half of this. Do this in batches so you're not overcrowding the pot. A few more pieces. And once we get some nice color on the chicken, I'll remove it, place it on a plate. Repeat this with the rest of the chicken and then we can add our onions, ginger and garlic. Okay, I've just added the onions and the ginger. Now in with the garlic. I always like to leave that to the end just so it doesn't burn. Okay, it's time to add our rice. Now I'm going to be using some fragrant jasmine rice. What I've done with the rice is just rinsed it three times. We just want a lot of the starch to go from the rice. So in with our jasmine rice and coat all of that rice in the onion mixture. Now we can add some stock, about 750 mils of stock, about three cups. Again, giving that a stir. To this, we're going to return our chicken and any of the juices. And what I'm doing is just placing it on the top of the rice. So as the rice starts to absorb all of that chicken stock, it'll fluff up and then on the top of it, the gorgeous little pieces of chicken are going to sit up proudly. So they go in. And then any of that remaining honey soy mixture, you can also add a few more tablespoons of that over the top just so it drizzles down into the rice. Okay, happy with that. Lid goes on. Now this is going to just come up to the boil. So I'll just keep an eye on it. Once it has, turn it to a really low heat and cook that for 15 minutes. Now once it's cooked, just let it sit there for about 10 minutes to relax. And then it's ready. Okay, the chicken rice has been turned off. I've allowed it to sit here for about 10 minutes. And let's have a look. Oh, it smells good. So I'm going to serve this with just some broccolini, just a little extra greens on the side. And I'm going to fluff this up. And you can see the chicken's perfectly cooked. Traditional chicken rice is served with a spring onion sauce and also a chili sauce. But I'm just going to garnish it with the spring onions and a chili. And on with our long red chili, which is not too spicy. Some spring onion over the top. I also like some sesame seeds that we'll just sprinkle over. And if you like a little bit of extra chili, why not add some chili oil on the side? So that's my version of chicken rice. It's really cut down, so I've made it simple. Because that's what you want in the middle of the week, a dish that's only going to take 30 minutes to make. And everyone is going to love it.