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One-pot Chicken and  Mushroom Rice

Not gonna lie, I love me a one-pot dish. It’s not even a weekday thing, but just days where you know you need to eat (thank you, MyFitnessPal), but your hunger cues are kind of off, you have zero food inspo and you simply cannot be arsed.

 

Cannot be arsed to do what, you ask? Cannot be arsed to wash a dish. To chop more than three things. To go out and get veg. To boil water. You get the idea. 

 

This is the recipe for those days. You whack it all in a rice cooker and call it a day. When the timer is up, you drizzle the lot with chilli oil and that’s it. You can eat it knowing it’s a nutritionally balanced meal that you made with your eyes closed. It’s a dish I wish I had in my arsenal when I was in uni instead of boiling dumplings or heating canned soup. It’s definitely a dish that I will be passing on to my daughter when it is her turn to go to uni. 

 

I could bang on some more but I think the simplicity and beauty of the dish speaks for itself.

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This recipe brings me back to cold winter nights in Hong Kong where my parents and I would go out and have claypot rice for Christmas dinner because we didn't really celebrate Christmas beyond getting gifts and looking at the Christmas lights. It was extremely comforting to see the steam waft up when the lid gets lifted up and you see the toppings sitting all pristine on top of the rice. The toppings were classic Cantonese claypot toppings, think preserved duck leg and laap cheong (dried Chinese sausages). I used to complain that I never spent a "real" Christmas eve with my parents but now that I am a full-grown adult woman in her late 30s, it's all I really want now for Christmas dinner.

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Enough nostalgia, let's get down to brass tacks.

 

This version here is better because there is no claypot. Yes, controversial after I've waxed lyrical for a whole paragraph about my young love affair with claypot rice. But it's really a matter of space-saving while living abroad. I've put my foot down in our household against getting one-use items. Yes, a waffle maker is great, but how many times are you really going to use it? The claypot is the same for me. Beyond making claypot rice that one time in the winter, what am I really going to use it for? Not much. The most involved part of the recipe is soaking the mushrooms and cubing the chicken. And that's it. You leave everything else to the rice cooker.

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One-pot Chicken and Mushroom Rice

Prep time: 20 mins | Cook time: 60 mins (or less depending on your rice cooker’s settings | Total time: 80 mins

 

Yields 2 generous or 4 small servings

 

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup of sushi rice, jasmine or basmati will do, but the bite of sushi rice really takes the recipe next level

  • 180mL dashi stock, dashi powder diluted in 180mL of warm water

  • 1 tbsp of grated ginger

  • 2 chicken thighs, skinned, deboned and cut into bite-sized chunks

  • 1 carrot, peeled and diced or cut into thin strips

  • 30g of fresh shiitake mushrooms, dried and rehydrated ok if in a pinch

  • 20g of enoki mushrooms, or replace with another type

  • 1 tbsp of unsalted butter, diced into cubes

  • Seasoning:

    • 1 tsp soy sauce 

    • ⅓ tsp salt 

    • 1 tbsp sake 

    • ½ tbsp mirin, sub with ½ tbsp sake and ½ tsp sugar

 

INSTRUCTIONS

 

  1. Rinse rice. Rinse your rice and place it in your rice cooker.

  2. Add the dashi stock. Pour the dashi stock gently into the rice cooker. You’ll notice that you’re using a bit less liquid than your usual white rice. That’s normal because the mushrooms and veg will give off quite a bit of water during the cooking process.

  3. Cut chicken into cubes and season. Prep your chicken and cut it into cubes. Place cubes into a medium-sized mixing bowl. Add seasonings and mix well. Set aside.

  4. Prep veg. Peel the carrot and cut it to your liking (cubes or strips). Place into the same mixing bowl as the chicken. Cut shiitake mushrooms into thin strips. Set aside with carrots and chicken. Cut the root away from the enoki mushrooms and separate the mushrooms. Set aside with the other prepped veg and chicken.

  5. Cooking the rice. Carefully tip the contents of the mixing bowl (along with the marinade) into the rice cooker where the rice is sitting. Distribute the contents evenly while making sure to not mix the toppings and rice too much otherwise the rice will not cook evenly. Close the lid and turn the rice cooker on.

  6. Rest and mix. Once the rice is done cooking. Place your butter on top and close the lid and let it rest for 5 minutes. Once the time is up, mix the rice gently with your rice paddle.

  7. Serve. The rice is best served immediately. Enjoy!

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