All You Need to Know about Garlic Chicken
Chinese food. Self explanatory right? Ha you are wrong. Being straight out of California, Asian food is one among three food groups I constantly ate. Mexican, American, and Asian that about sums up the food culture. However, never did I think about the adventure that comes with ordering Chinese Food. Growing up where I lived, there was Asian food restaurants within five miles of each other and each had unique takes or offerings. For example, one had wonton soup, one did not. One had pork egg rolls and vegetable but not both. I mean diversity is necessary to compete among each other or a restaurant would go out of business. Though, never did I think. Jeez, instead of selecting one type of dish. Why not just go for the whole bracket? Well I mean, I know why. I didn’t want to grow up to be 400 plus pounds and my mother would not believe I would spend that much money on food. Trust me, I got plenty of the “Allie, we have food at home.” rigamarole which of course, now adulting, you learn your mother was once again right. Maybe if I did that, I would have learned about Garlic Chicken.
Below are the ingredients I needed for Garlic Chicken:
• 1 pound of chicken thighs, boneless. Skinless.
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar
• 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, divided.
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 6 garlic cloves, minced and peeled
• 1 tablespoon of peeled and minced fresh ginger
• 10 scallions white parts cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons of sherry
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• Cooked rice for serving, optional
Our Ratings
My Rating: 10/10. I am a sucker for Garlic. Sucker for Chicken. Scallions are just a bonus. I like having some Asian flair chicken. Living in Florida, Asian style chicken is not really a common dish. You have more southern, and southern American inspired dishes.
Shayne’s rating: 9/10, mainly because the chicken he had tasted like Chicken Adobo he has had. He tried the chicken plain at first. He felt this dish had more Filipino influence than Chinese that Kristi was trying to aim for. However, he paired it with cauliflower stir fried rice and soy sauce, the pairings took away the taste of Chicken Adobo.
In short, the Garlic Chicken will definitely be another dish I will keep in my recipe vault for ideas for dinner. This dish is great if you pair it with plain, steamed rice, fried rice, or stir-fry cauliflower fried rice. A way to be adventurous with chicken!
My Financials
I did my shopping at Walmart for this recipe. Below are the costs of each item.
• Chicken thighs-$10.60- I used breast because that’s healthier and the only meat that Walmart had.
• Cornstarch- $0.99
• Sesame Oil- already purchased
• Rice vinegar-$1.96
• Soy sauce- already purchased
• White pepper- used black pepper instead
• Vegetable oil- used olive oil instead
• Garlic cloves- $2.98
• Fresh ginger- $1.10
• Scallions- $0.50
• Sherry- $2.18
• Sugar- $2.14
The Garlic Chicken’s ingredients total cost was $22.45 for us. More expensive than other recipes we have made. The most costly item of course was the chicken, but it was 2.25 pounds. The positives of this recipe is that I bought ingredients to reuse for other recipes.
That is always the bright side of cooking at home.
1. Meals for the next couple of days.
2. Reusable ingredients for other recipes.
3. Earning money back on cash back applications.
Those Millennial Cash Back Application Earnings
For savings, I used Fetch Rewards, Shopkick, and Coinout, like how I always use them.
Fetch Rewards, one of my favorite applications, I earned 50 points but because of other ingredients we bought for other recipes. A victory is a victory for this application.
For walking into Walmart, I got 10 kicks for just walking in to the store. Shopkick typically does not have the products I shop for, I earn kicks by walking to the store. Though, there is an option to scan promoted items to earn more kicks.
Finally, Coinout earned me three cents for scanning in the receipt. Coinout definitely is an application where you have to do subscriptions to earn a significant amount of money back. If you are not pressed to earn money, then this application works very well.
Unfortunately, I did not earn any money from Ibotta. For this recipe, and for majority of the recipes. There is not a lot of fresh groceries that were on Ibotta. There was also not a lot of generic dairy products, and Walmart did not have the certain brands we were looking for to buy. :(
Outcomes and Recommendations
I do recommend this dish if you are craving Chinese food but keeping it light. I would recommend having some brown rice, garlic chicken, and string beans as a dinner dish. It would be a great choice for those who are in prep mode or trying to be healthier with their food choices.