Bang bang chicken

Bang bang chicken

Tonight I made the bang bang chicken from the Thermomix Something for Everyone recipe book. This book is great for families, and not just those with young babies. It has directions for each recipe of what to skip, or when to take certain parts out to make it suitable for younger members of the family. This means that the adults can still enjoy a bit of chilli or spice in their meals and keep it toned down for the kids (or even the adults who don't like spicy or hot food).

First up was the sauce. I haven't found many satay sauces that I really like, but this one - wow! I have discovered my new go-to sauce. I will use this for any recipe now that requires satay sauce. I didn't add any chilli sauce to it at this stage, I decided to leave the sauce separate and dribble it over the dish at the end for a bit more colour.

The next part of the recipe required the chicken breasts to be steamed in the simmering basket, however the breasts I had were quite thick, so I sliced them in half horizontally to thin them out a bit. I decided to use the varoma dish and tray to cook the chicken to make the process a bit faster. One thing I dislike is washing the varoma after cooking meat, so whenever I am steaming meat, I scrunch up and wet some baking paper and lay this over the dish/tray, making sure to leave some space around the edges for the steam to get through. Also the side vents at the side of the tray need to be free for enough steam to circulate the top area of the varoma. The food cooks just as quickly this way, and you don't end up with cooked chicken juice in all the little holes.

In the end was able to cut out the second steaming of the chicken and move onto the next step, so this made the recipe even faster - not that it is a long-winded recipe! I love how quickly the vermicelli noodles cook when you put them in the bowl. So simple!

The components of the dish went together pretty quickly, so the chicken didn't really get a chance to cool that much, and it was a bit hot to pull apart with my hands. Instead i sliced them up a little bit, then popped them into the bowl and shredded them for 4 seconds on speed 4, reversed.

That is pretty much it! Then it all just needs to go onto the plate, add the sauces and its done! There was quite a lot of sauce leftover, so I might have to have that for lunch tomorrow with something.

Happy thermomixing!