A Quick and Easy Meal...That Tasted Good!

Today was a busy day.  I had a couple boneless and skinless chicken breasts marinating in teriyaki to cook this evening.  To be honest, I hadn't decided what to cook with them, thinking I would have time to decide that later. 

WRONG! 

The day was so busy it was time to cook the chicken and I still had no clue what I was going to fix with them. I generally keep a few boxes and bags of various side dishes for such situations.

I chose a box of Rice-A-Roni Fried Rice mix.  My initial plan was just to make it as a side dish.  However, they had a "Chicken Fried Rice" recipe on the box, which basically was adding diced chicken and eggs, along with cutting back the water used. 

I tweaked the recipe as below and I hope you like the idea enough to give it a try!

1 pound boneless/skinless chicken breasts

Teriyaki Marinade

1 Box Rice-A-Roni Fried Rice Flavor

1/2 cup diced bell pepper

1/2 cup diced onion

I clove garlic, diced

1-1/2 cups water

Marinate the chicken.  If you use my homemade marinade give it at least a few hours, if you use a store bought marinade follow the instructions.

After marinating, cut the chicken into 1" pieces

Brown the rice/vermicelli mixture per direcection on the box, adding the bell pepper and onion

Add the garlic when the other is just about done browning

Push the mixture to one side of the pan and add the chicken

Brown the chicken, stirring to allow all sides to brown

Once chicken has browned, mix it with the rice & veggie mixture

Add the water and seasoning packet 

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally

Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and let cook for 15-20 mins.

Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Teriyaki on the Fly

I got some chicken out this morning and decided to marinate it in teriyaki sauce for dinner.  The only problem was I didn't have any teriyaki sauce and didn't want to have to run to the store. In perusing recipes online I did my usual of taking a bit of this and a bit of that and I came up with a pretty good sauce! Normally I marinate chicken for a day, this one was only marinating for 6 hours.  It still had good flavor and I think would be even better if it had been allowed to marinate for a full day.

About the ingredients; Miren, a sweet Japanese rice wine, is usually used.  I didn't have any so I used Marsala instead.  I think any sweet wine would work.  Rice vinegar was called for which I had.  If I hadn't had it I would have used either wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or plain distilled vinegar. For the sweetener I used honey, you could use white or brown sugar if you don't have honey. Oil, I used olive.  I think you could use whichever you wanted or have on hand, even butter if that's all you got.

Here we go!

1/2 Cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/3 Cup Sweet wine
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon honey

Place all items in a small saucepan and bring just to a boil, stirring often.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temp. (You can put it in the fridge to hasten this process).  Stir it one more time and pour over the chicken. I used 4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts, placed them in a 1 gal ziplock baggie and turned it a few times during the day.  Note that these were frozen at the start so were kept on the counter-top to defrost and marinate at the same time.

The chicken breasts were baked for 25 minutes at 350*F and came out good.  I am looking forward to trying this again when I am able to marinate them overnight in the fridge as I usually do.

Enjoy!