CURRY CHICKEN

When I went home for Thanksgiving two weeks ago, I was talking with my parents about my idea to try to cook some curry chicken. My dad went into the pantry and brought out some curry powder that he got from the local Asian market. I took some with me when I came back to my apartment and since then, have been waiting for an opportunity to use it.

It’s been for a while now that I’ve been wanting to cook something that was a little out of my comfort zone, something that I hadn’t tried to make before. I’ve had curry chicken from numerous places, but it wasn’t until now that I thought to try to make it from scratch. For my first time making it, I was more than happy with how it came out.

Curry Chicken
Makes ~ 4 servings

~ 2 pieces of chicken breast
~ 1 large potato
~ 1/3 cup peas
~ 1/2 small yellow onion
~ 1/3 cup chopped scallions
~ 1/4 tsp garlic powder
~ 1/2 tsp salt
~ 2-1/2 tsp curry powder
~ 1-1/4 cup chicken broth
~ 1 cup milk
~ Flour

Prep Work:

• If you’re using frozen peas, measure them out and drop them into a bowl of water to allow them to defrost while you prep the remaining vegetables and chicken.
• Take your onion, cut it in half, and slice it flat side down, so that you get nice half-rings. I would say make the cuts about a 1/2″ wide. For the scallions, chop them down to about 1/8″ to 1/4″ pieces.
• For your potato, the cut depends on how big you want the chunks to be in your curry. My preference was to go with bite-sized wedges, so I cut the potato down first into 1/2″ wide discs, after which I cut down into 6 – 8 pieces.
• Measure out the garlic powder, salt, and curry powder into a separate bowl and set aside.
• Prep your chicken by cutting it into chunks about 1″ in size. Place these chunks into a bowl, then pour 1/2 cup of milk in there and put that into the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. I found that soaking the chicken pieces in milk will help the flour adhere to it better.
• While the chicken is soaking, get ready for coating the pieces by dropping maybe 1/2 cup of flour into a Ziploc freezer bag. (Amount of flour is approximate, so add more if needed during the process.)
• Once your 10 minutes are up, transfer about 8 pieces of chicken from the milk bowl into the flour bag, shaking it up to getting everything nice and evenly coated. Repeat this process until all the chicken has been coated with flour.

Stovetop:

• Take out a medium skillet and heat up some oil on medium-high heat. When the oil is at temperature, put your chicken pieces down and pan-fry the outside of the chicken just enough to get that golden-brown color. Don’t worry about cooking the chicken all the way through, as that will finish off in the simmering process.
• Once you’ve finished pan-frying the chicken, lower your heat down a little bit from medium-high and add in the onions, peas, and potatoes. Stir everything around to combine the mixture.
• Sprinkle on the spice mixture into the skillet, stirring as needed to get everything nice and combined. Give it a minute or two for the spices to cook into everything a little bit.
• In a separate bowl, whisk together your chicken broth and milk before combining it in with the chicken & vegetable mixture. Bring that up to a boil before covering it and simmering on medium-low.
• Let that cook for about 30 minutes before combining in the chopped scallions. After another minute or two over the heat, take the skillet off to cool for about 5 minutes.

Plating:

• My personal preference was to serve this over a bed of rice, but it can certainly be eaten by itself as well and tasted just as good. After the entire cooking process, the mixture takes on the yellowish color of the curry powder, so one of the reasons I like to add in the scallions is to give the dish a bit of added color to contrast.

The curry powder that you use will, in part, dictate the heat level of the dish. Yellow curry is inherently not too spicy, but if you want to kick it up a bit, you can always combine in a bit of cayenne pepper in there too. The dish is definitely a hearty mixture, especially with the chicken and the potatoes. But the flavor combination is something different, and the smell of the kitchen is amazing while the dish is cooking.

Potential Adjustments:

• Next time, I want to try to bring the curry flavor to the forefront by adding an additional 1/2 teaspoon or full teaspoon of curry powder during the step that the chicken/vegetables are cooking together.
• The onions kind of faded away in the midst of all the other ingredients in the dish. Maybe try to use bigger chunks of onions?
• I’ve read on other curry recipes that people would incorporate coconut milk into their curry dishes. It sounds interesting and something worth giving a shot. It could bring a nice sweet and spicy flavor component to the dish.

Categories: Recipes

Tagged as: curry chicken, potatoes, recipes, yellow curry