Soy-Poached Chicken and Roasted Peppers over Rice with Peanuts
current situation: roasted chicken, peppers, rice, soy sauce broth
Everything in this bowl is soft except the peanuts, and that is the whole design.
The chicken is poached, not browned. Look at it — the skin is pale and slack, not crisp, because it has been sitting in soy broth rather than in a pan. Trying to crisp it first and then simmer it is the worst of both; this dish commits to soft and gets its texture somewhere else.
That somewhere else is a handful of whole roasted peanuts. Not chopped, not crushed. Whole, so they stay loud against everything around them.
- Feeds
- 4
- Hands-on
- 25 minutes
- Simmer
- 35 minutes
- Texture
- Peanuts, whole
What you need
The broth and the chicken
- 8 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 2/3 cup soy sauce
- 2 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 6 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 thumb ginger, sliced
- 2 star anise
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
To serve
- 2 cups jasmine rice, rinsed
- 3 red bell peppers, roasted, peeled, torn into strips
- 1 cup roasted salted peanuts, whole
- Coarse cracked black pepper
- More chilli flakes
How it goes
1 — Blacken and skin the peppers first
Whole over a flame until black all over, covered ten minutes, skins slipped off, torn into wide strips. They go in at the end, cold or warm, never into the pot.
2 — Build the broth and taste it before the chicken
Everything for the broth into a wide pot and brought to a simmer. Taste it now — it should be slightly too salty on its own, because the chicken and the rice will take a lot of it.
3 — Chicken in skin-side up, barely submerged
Laid in so the thighs are about two thirds covered. Not swimming. The exposed skin keeps a little of its character even poached.
4 — The barest simmer, 35 minutes
A bubble every second or two. A hard boil tightens the meat and makes the broth cloudy, and this one should stay clear and dark.
5 — Rice cooked plain, then wet with the broth
Jasmine rinsed and cooked plain. In the bowl, a few spoonfuls of broth ladled over the rice before anything else goes on — that is the stained, tan rice in the picture.
6 — Build soft first, loud last
Rice, then chicken, then pepper strips tucked round the sides, and the peanuts thrown over the whole thing at the very end so they do not soften.
pro tip — Peanuts go on at the table, not in the kitchen. Two minutes sitting in broth and they are gone.
7 — Black pepper and chilli over the top
Coarse cracked pepper and a scatter of chilli flakes across everything. Keep the rest of the broth hot in a jug for anyone who wants more.
Keep the broth. It is better the next day and it makes a second dinner out of nothing. LFG.