Cooking Experiment: Thai Peanut Chicken Satay and Ginger Bokchoy

[tuftears]

Every now and then I look in the fridge to see what I have that needs to get used up before it expires. This week it was... peanut butter. Yes. Entire bottle of peanut butter, not even touched, the tamper-proof seal was still in place. Well. I like the occasional peanut butter sandwich but there was no way I was going to make a dent in it before its July expiration date.

Then it came to me, what about using it for cooking? Specifically, Thai peanut chicken satay?

Well. That shouldn't be too hard, right?



Ta-dah! What you're not seeing in the picture is it taking about an hour and a half longer than I expected it to take to make. Here's the rundown:

1. I set up the brown rice in the cooker earlier, set to a timer to go off at 5:00. Easy.


2. I started marinading the chicken around 1 PM-ish, per Emeril's chicken satay recipe.


3. Around 4:30-ish, I began thinking about the actual cooking. Hmm. The chicken itself sounded like it should be done very quickly, and this Thai curry peanut sauce sounded like it should take ten minutes, so I should start with the veggies, right?


4. This is where things started to complicate. I had a section of ginger root and four servings of baby bok choy (two packages) so it seemed like a natural idea to grate the last of it to make the bok choy. I used my shiny new micrograter, then had the bright idea of mincing the last bit, and using the larger minced ginger for the veggies, the finely grated, almost pureed ginger for the sauce.


5. The catch was this: I needed a wok for the veggies. Then I needed a frying pan for the sauce. Then another frying pan for cooking the chicken. I normally prefer one-dish cooking if possible. Unfortunately, I suck at sequencing multiple dishes in the kitchen.


6. So... I made the veggies first, paying close attention-- you don't want minced ginger to burn.


7. Once I had the bok choy at the 'steam it for a few minutes to make sure it's done' stage, I started heating up the frying pan for the peanut sauce, then defrosted a couple cubes of frozen crushed garlic. (available in a package from Trader Joe's, the first time I tried using these)


8. The veggies were done in good time so I could set them aside... The sauce wasn't. I rapidly discovered the whole process was actually rather complicated, from adding the pureed ginger, browning the garlic and ginger, then adding red curry sauce...


9. Then I cracked open the peanut butter jar. Oh dear. It's been in there so long the oil had separated out, but it was too hard to simply stir. Throwing caution to the wind, I carved out several large chunks of, oops, chunky peanut butter (the recipe wanted creamy) and trying to melt it down. Then I added the brown sugar, chili powder, cayenne pepper, stirred...


10. Oh, this is probably worthwhile noting: the recipe calls for a full can of coconut milk. I think this is overkill, you only need about half, maybe two third the can. Mix it in and stir until you have what seems like an acceptable degree of liquidity.


11. After long last, the sauce seemed okay. I heated up another frying pan to high temperature and grilled the marinaded chicken for about 2.5 minutes on each side. That part was thanksfully trivial.


12. And behold, dinner!

It tastes pretty good, thanksfully, and the chicken was cooked properly, tender but with the right amount of Maillard reaction. There's enough sauce left over that I froze the rest and can plan to make another Thai peanut chicken satay dinner in the next six months without having to cook the sauce.

Comments

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

From long-past days when I'd experimented with peanut butter cookies and peanut butter bread: you can treat it as being equivalent to a 50/50 mix of flour and oil, and substitute it into recipes that call for those things to make a peanut-butter-based variant.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this in a while, so attempt it at your own risk =^.^=.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, problem is I don't eat that stuff terribly often. ;) Finding a savory peanut butter recipe is better.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I shall have to try this experiment at least once. :)

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Peanut butter is one of those things that usually last long past mandated expiry dates.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but at rate of consumption, I didn't want to test it for five years past the expiration date. ;)

[centauress.livejournal.com]

For refrigerated peanut butter, I kept it in one of those bullet-blender containers? Swap in the blades, drop it in the blender, and poof, all mixed again.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Genius!

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

That sounds wonderful! :9

I won't pretend it's the least bit healthy on my part, but I've used peanut butter for stir-frying many a time -- though not so seriously-prepared as it seems you do on a regular basis. For me, this typically also involves a little bit of soy sauce and a bit of honey, and sometimes a dab of oyster sauce.

Once upon a time, I had a bottle of "pina colada" mixer syrup I'd gotten as leftovers from a project, and added a touch of that for a coconut-and-pineapple touch in a moment of "mad-science" cooking, and it worked surprisingly well. (Most of my experiments in so-called cooking in this regard are based on "what leftovers do I have?" or "what is on sale at the Publix store?" rather than anything so deliberate as looking up an actual recipe and then shopping for specific ingredients to make it.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, as the title suggests, this is the first time I've tried making it. ;) Do you just put the peanut butter straight into the wok?

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

When I've done it ... yeah, right into the wok. A large part of it is OIL, after all. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Peanut oil! That's healthy for you, right? >_>

That actually seems like a pretty good idea.

[rowyn]

The sauce looks delicious! :9