Should Have Babysat The Rice

My blog is a little late. Typically I blog about what I have made and eaten shortly after I have eaten it, but I didn't finish making my dinner until around 10:15PM, so by the time it was eaten, I was ready for bed.

For dinner last night I made Crunchy Chicken with Sesame Rice and Green Beans. Well, by the time I was done making everything, there was no rice.

I have a microwaveable rice cooker and I used that to cook the rice in. Well, I have only ever done like box rices (Rice-a-roni and the like) in my cooker. I have never done regular rice in it. I don't know where I went wrong, but when I went to take the rice out of the cooker, it was like this hardened white disk (see picture below). There was no way I could save it. So, I imagine the rice would have been good with this recipe if I had gotten to taste it. It was the rice tragedy that made my dinner be so late.

Again this recipe (just like last Thursday's) had fresh green beans in it. These beans were steamed and finished off with a little salt and sesame seeds. Definitely a tasty combo! I would recommend prepping the green beans ahead of time, so you don't have to snap ends of the beans right before dinner.

Last Friday, the soup I made had a baguette on the side. Well, I only used 2/3 of the baguette for that recipe. The rest of the baguette was used in this recipe. It was what made the coating for the chicken. I thawed out two massive chicken breasts overnight and then cut them into tenders. You could by chicken tenders at the store, but buying chicken breasts and usually in bulk save you money. The baguette was as hard as a rock by this point, but since I was turning into bread crumbs for the chicken, it worked out beautifully. The recipe said to use a food processor to make the bread crumbs, but you don't have to use a food processor. I don't own one and my bread crumbs turned out fine. I used my Tupperware chopper (it looks like a food processor but it has a hand crank). You could also throw the bread into a freezer baggy and roll a rolling pin over it.

The chicken turned out really well. I now know how to make crispy chicken tenders at a much cheaper price and the nice thing about these is that they are not deep fried, which makes them a healthy alternative to the ones you can get at fast food joints.

On the side I made a soy-mayo type sauce for the chicken. It was a nice fit for the chicken and painfully easy to make.

This meal was definitely one of my favorites this week. I was able to re-heat the leftover chicken tenders today for lunch. I paired them with some honey for dipping! I will also be making these again to be using in a wrap later. This meal is definitely kid friendly! I would recommend it to everyone! Next time, I will babysit the rice and just cook it on the stove top.

My rice "disk:"




The Chicken and Green Beans: