It’s like FRIED RICE and Chinese Chicken, all made in one pot!! You’ll love the savoury flavour of the rice, and how the Asian chicken marinade adds great flavour with just a quick 10 minute marinade.
Plus, there’s a load of veggies mixed through so this One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice is a complete meal!
CHINESE CHICKEN AND RICE – A ONE POT WONDER!
Hands up everyone who would make fried rice more often but you never seem to have day old cooked rice when the craving hits?
If you’ve got your hand raised high – then this one is for YOU!! The rice in this recipe tastes like fried rice but it’s made from scratch using uncooked rice. With the added bonus of a tasty Asian marinated chicken AND veggies to make a complete dinner in one pot!
DOUBLE DUTY: ASIAN CHICKEN MARINADE AND SAUCE
This One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice starts off with a simple Asian chicken marinade that doubles as the sauce to flavour the rice.
The Sauce-Marinade is made with just soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine (see recipe for subs), Oyster Sauce and pepper. In my world, this is the bare minimum I would put in a Chinese sauce or marinade – whether a stir fry sauce, noodles or a pouring sauce.
Anything less and the flavour will taste flat. Both Oyster Sauce and the Chinese cooking wine are what adds complexity to this sauce.
If you can’t get or can’t consume Oyster Sauce, the best substitute in this recipe is Hoisin Sauce. You will get a slight Five Spice flavour from the Hoisin and it’s fantastic!
The Sauce-Marinade is used as a quick 10 minute marinade for the chicken before being tipped into the pot to flavour the rice. You could absolutely marinade overnight if you want – but you’ll get enough flavour in the dish with just 10 minutes.
HOW I MAKE CHINESE CHICKEN AND RICE
This is a straightforward recipe but there’s a few things I specifically do to achieve the tastiest outcome with the least effort – this is, after all, a quick and easy meal but that’s no reason to skimp on quality!
A) SEPARATE STEMS FROM LEAFY PARTS of Asian greens.The purpose of this so we can add the stems to cook with the rice, then just wilt the leafy part using residual heat while the rice is resting.
Apply this rule to any vegetables you use in this recipe. Cook things like carrots, peas, capsicum/bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and corn with the rice, and wilt delicate things like baby spinach while the rice is resting.
B) SEAR marinated chicken to brown the outside, but keep it raw on the inside – it will finish cooking with the rice. Caramelisation not only adds flavour to the chicken but the browning left in the pot forms part of the flavour base for the rice.
C) Place the CHICKEN ON TOP of the rice to finish cooking while the rice cooks. This way, the juices drip into the rice and we can preserve the caramelised surface on the chicken which would sweat off if fully submerged in the liquid.
D) REST RICE and WILT Leafy Greens. Resting the rice for 10+ minutes is a key step with any rice dish. That is how to ensure your rice comes out fluffy rather than gluey.
In this particular recipe, I use the residual heat trapped in the pot while the rice is resting to wilt the leafy part of the Asian greens.
Then, once the rice is rested and ready for fluffing, the leafy greens are wilted and can be tossed through the rice.
HIGHLY VERSATILE RECIPE
Like many recipes on my site, this recipe lends itself to all sorts of variations. It can take more vegetables, it can be made with mince meat (ground meat) rather than chicken pieces – just cook it with the sauce then proceed with the recipe as written.
You could even make it with fish and/or prawns/shrimp – but I’d cook them separately first and only return them to the pot while the rice is resting just to warm them through.
I often get messages on recipes where readers hesitantly say “I hope it’s ok that I tinkered with your recipe….” and I always respond – “YES OF COURSE!!!” I love that you can make my recipes your own and adapt it to your taste.
So if you tinker with this recipe, tell me what you do! I want to know! – Nagi x
More One-Pot Chicken and Rice
Baked Chicken and Rice (a reader favourite!)
One Pot Greek Chicken and Lemon Rice (another firm reader favourite!)
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
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One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 tsp ginger , grated
- 1 onion , finely chopped
- 500g (1 lb) chicken thighs , skinless boneless, halved (Note 1)
- 1 big bunch Chinese Broccoli with thick stems (Note 2)
Rice:
- 1 cup (180g) uncooked white rice (Note 3)
- 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) chicken broth , low salt
Sauce:
- 2 cloves garlic , small, chopped
- 2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or Mirin (Note 4)
- 3 tbsp oyster sauce (or sub with Hoisin)
- 1 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce (Note 5)
- 1/4 tsp white pepper (or black)
Garnish:
- green onion , sliced
- Sesame seeds
Instructions
- Mix Sauce in a large bowl. Add chicken and set aside to marinate for 10 minutes to overnight.
- Cut Chinese broccoli stems cut into 2.5 cm/1″ pieces, leafy part 5cm/2.5cm pieces.
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Remove chicken from marinade, shaking off excess marinade – RESERVE marinade!
- Cook both sides until golden – about 90 seconds on each side, don’t let them burn! Remove chicken onto plate.
- Add a touch of oil if pot is dry. Add onion, garlic and ginger, cook for 2 minutes until tinged with gold.
- Add rice, stir to coat grains in oil. Add broth, reserved Marinade and Chinese broccoli stems. Stir.
- Place chicken across the top, pour in juices pooled on plate. Cover, bring to simmer then lower heat to medium.
- Cook for 12 -15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed (tilt pot to check).
- Remove from heat. Working quickly, scatter Chinese broccoli leaves across surface, clamp lid back on.
- Rest for 10 minutes. Remove lid, toss rice and serve, garnished with sesame seeds and green onions. A dollop of your favourite chilli paste wouldn’t go astray either!
Recipe Notes:
Other Asian Greens – like pak choy, bok choi etc Cut per recipe but scatter across top of chicken, do not stir into liquid (because they’re more delicate so will cook to mush if mixed in liquid).
Frozen or fresh diced veg – stir into liquid and cook per recipe.
Cauliflower – stir into liquid and cook per recipe. 3. Rice – Any ordinary white rice is suitable for this recipe. Long grain, medium grain, short grain, Japanese rice, sushi rice, jasmine, basmati. Long grain, jasmine and basmati will yield the fluffiest rice, the others are a bit stickier as they are supposed to be. Recipe is NOT suitable for: paella or risotto rice. Brown rice will require the following adjustments: Add extra 0.5 cup of water, do not add stems or chicken in. Cover and cook rice for 30 minutes on low. Stir through stems and top with chicken. Cover and cook 10 minutes, remove from heat, follow recipe to wilt leafy part and stand 10 minutes before serving, 4. Chinese Cooking wine – read here for more information. Sold at Asian grocery stores and the Asian section of some supermarkets (Coles, Woolies in Australia). Dry sherry and mirin are excellent substitutes. For a non alcoholic version, leave it out and add 1/2 tsp chicken stock powder into Sauce. 5. Dark soy sauce has a more intense flavour and colour than light soy sauce and ordinary all purpose soy sauce. This is what stains the rice in this recipe. It can be substituted for light or all purpose soy sauce. 6. Nutrition per serving. To reduce salt, use low sodium soy sauce.
Nutrition Information:
LIFE OF DOZER
“Coffee for me, and a dog treat for Dozer!” I chirped, when I spied a cute jar of doggie treats at a coffee shop.
Little did I know – they were VEGAN dog treats. What is this world coming to?
Not that Dozer cared. (But I did. It was expensive!!!)
Loved this. It was so easy and so tasty. Such a great way to use up any kind of greens you have on hand. Thank you Nagi.
Hi Nagi, if I double the chicken and keep the same quantity of rice, do I need to reduce the amount of chicken stock to account for the extra liquid from the chicken?
Hi Hazel, leave the liquid as is as that will be absorbed by the rice 🙂 Enjoy! N x
This was the first of your recipes which I have attempted. Couldn’t find the ginger. Used up the dregs from a jar of chilli instead.
I now have one dirty wok, leftovers for lunch, and a satisfied husband who asked for this dish to go on our regular cycle of midweek meals.
Thank you! I look forward to trying more of your recipes over the next few weeks 🙂
Excellent and super easy! I doubled garlic (4-5 cloves) and used 1 thumb ginger grated but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. The rice was perfect the first night but the grains absorb more of the saucy goodness as it sits. Half of the leftovers (rice + chicken) were used to make quite excellent congee later on in the week simmered for ~30 mins with chicken stock.
Hiya! Love this recipe! I just realised that my husband bought bone in thighs instead of fillet. I was wondering if this would still work with bone in thighs/how would I adjust the cooking time? Thank you!
I made the chicken and rice last night and it was delicious. I loved the taste, and the chicken was so tender.
This was so easy and super delicious!! I used a pinch of five spice (as I do with all my Chinese cooking😅). Thank you so much for sharing this! Will be cooking this over and over again!
Love it! I made it with cauliflower and the whole family gobbled everything up. I love that it’s so versatile and can be changed up with different vegetables and meat. It totally reminds me of a Malaysian dish called clay pot chicken. Thank you for sharing and can’t wait to try your other recipes
Very easy to make. Some of the rice cooked unevenly, but I didn’t mind. The flavor was intense and delicious. I added asparagus to my dish. Thanks for a quick and easy meal!
I don’t know why, but this came out more like a risotto for us! I used jasmine rice. Tasted AMAZING, just gluggier than expected. Maybe I’ll use less liquid next time.
Sorry you had issues, sounds like the liquid may of needed to be reduced a little more as it definitely shouldn’t be gluggy!
I have enjoyed reading through your recipes. Fresh, innovative ideas. Will try them out soon as I can. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Nagi, Going to try this recipe using rice cooker for dinner. Do I use the same rice to warer ratio? Thanks
Thank you for this. What started off as “Asian Chicken Rice” became “chicken claypot rice” and my husband was super pleased.
Tweaks: added Chinese sausage after the garlic and extra ginger paste.
Used chicken breast but added them whole (marinated) the same time as the rice.
Cooked the last 5 mins on high to get the burnt rice bits at the bottom
Asked the strongest person in the house to scrape the bottom and mix with a wooden spoon. This also breaks up the chicken breasts to smaller pieces.
Enjoy with chilli oil and sambal,
I just made this for the third time.I increased the ginger to a desrtspoon.It is so good my son’s favourite now.
Awesome recipe! Thanks Nagi. I absolutely love this one pot meal – so quick, easy and tasty.
Perfect! N x
I am the worst cook ever, This recipe was so easy and absolutely delicious. I love that you give us different options, like substituting the Oyster Sauce for Hoisin. Thank you for making me look so good. My family loved it! xxxx
This is a really simple, beautiful recipe with delicate flavours. Lovely so see the recipe recommended in the UK Guardian last week! Thanks Nagi X
Hi Nagi. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. I made it tonight for the first time and it was a big hit with the whole family! They have asked me to definitely make it again. 🙂
Hi.Were the oven baked chicken rice and i use pearl barley instead?
Hi Nagi
Your site got a name check from Ann Lee in the Guardian Online today as part of her article on rice. She gave a link to your One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice as an example of an adaptable dish. The other she mentioned was from Yotam Ottolenghi!! Way to go Nagi!
We still make at least 2 of your recipes every week. Stay safe, from Carol in Auckland xx
WOOT! Awesome to hear Carol!!!
This is the 4th Recipe I have tried and it was also easy and delicious.My Son is Loving them all as well.I used Bok Choy for the green.