Asian chicken rice bowl

This is a basically the Asian chicken lettuce wrap recipe. It looked good, and the chicken is flavored like the P.F. Chang version, but I served it as a rice bowl, because I'm not a huge fan of the lettuce wrap form-factor. It's too messy and difficult to eat.

The recipe says it makes 6 wraps of 210 calories each. This would have been 120g per serving, and would have been the right amount. I'll make that amount next time.

Sauce

This sauce is very good!

• 3 tbsp. soy sauce
• 3 tbsp. hoisin sauce
• 1 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1 tbsp. rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp. peanut butter
• 1 tbsp. honey
• 2 tbsp. sweet chili sauce (substituted chili garlic sauce)
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. ginger powder

Combine the ingredients in a bowl.

Main ingredients

• 16 oz. ground chicken (or turkey)
• 2 tbsp. oil for cooking
• 1/2 onion (finely diced)
• 1/2 tbsp. garlic (minced)

Cook these ingredients until mostly done. I should have used a larger pan!

• 1 cup red or green pepper (finely diced)
• 8 oz. water chestnuts (drained and finely diced) (use 4 oz. next time)

Add these and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the sauce.

This was really good, but there were too many water chestnuts. Half the amount would be fine.

To serve

• peanuts (crushed) - optional
• scallions - optional

The original recipe was for a lettuce wrap, but I served it on a bed of brown rice instead.

I saved one serving for dinner and vacuum sealed and froze 4 servings.

Most of the servings were 150g, but that was a little too much. Making 6 servings of 120g is a good size even for dinner, with 1/4 cup of brown rice.

120g serving over 1/2 cup (65g) of cooked brown rice. This was reheated from frozen in the sous vide, which worked perfectly.

Nutrition facts

Per serving:

3/5 tbsp. soy sauce
3/5 tbsp. hoisin sauce
1/5 tbsp. sesame oil
1/5 tbsp. rice vinegar
1/5 tbsp. peanut butter
1/5 tbsp. honey
2/5 tbsp. chili garlic sauce
3.2 oz. ground chicken
2/5 tbsp. olive oil
1/5 cup green bell pepper
1.6 oz. water chestnuts
1/4 cup cooked brown rice

• 335 kcal
• 22.4g protein
• 3.8g dietary fiber
• 14.6g fat
• 28.5g carbs

Brown rice

I decided to try making brown rice instead of the white Japanese sushi rice that I normally make.

My Panasonic Japanese rice cooker doesn't cook brown rice very well so I used the package directions.

• 1 cup brown rice
• 2 1/2 cups water
• salt

Preparation:

• Bring to water and salt to a boil.
• Add the rice, stir.
• Lower to simmer, cover.
• Cook for 45 minutes. Don't open the cover.
• Let rest for 15 minutes.
• Stir.
• Refrigerate within 2 hours.

This was good with the Asian chicken! I'll try it with some other non-stir-fry recipes.

I was confused by the portion size; 1/4 cup (43g) and 170 calories must be the uncooked amount of rice, because 1/4 cup of cooked rice or 43 grams is an unbelievably small amount. Given the package instructions that 1 cup of rice + 2 1/2 cups of water makes 3 1/2 cups of cooked rice, this seems about right.

It also says that a serving is 3/4 cup cooked, which makes more sense; it feels like it should be 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup for a reasonable serving size.

1/2 cup cooked brown rice is a good-sized serving and weighs out to 65 grams.