Grilled Lemongrass Chicken with Fresh Slaw

Grilled Lemongrass Chicken with Fresh Slaw 

 (Com Goi Ga Nuong)

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting  for has arrived!

It was suggested by the boys that Vietnamese Grilled Lemongrass Chicken with Fresh Slaw on Rice be the debut dish. 

This dish is very Vietnamese, however it is very uniquely Garner.  It's actually a combination of two Vietnamese dishes- Goi Ga (Shredded Cabbage Salad with Chicken) and Com Ga Nuong (Rice with Grilled Chicken).

I absolutely love eating fresh shredded cabbage.  I'll find excuses to put it in anything from sandwiches to salads.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the other meat-loving members of my family on the same page. However, they sure loved my Grilled Chicken with Rice, which is served with sliced cucumbers and julienne carrots (not enough roughage in my book).  So one fortunate day, I combined the two, it was a hit and we now eat this almost every week. 

This works so well in so many ways it's ridiculous. First is the variety of texture.  You have the crunch from the peanuts and the veggies, the soft warm stickiness from the rice and finally the chicken to top it off.  Then there's the flavors!  Sweet, tangy, savory, rich all in one dish. 

To make life easier for you this recipe is for 10-12 servings and probably more depending on your portion size.  (I have to feed my 17 yr old brother,  11 yr old son and my 6 feet tall husband.  Needless to say our portions are pretty big in the Garner house!)  So whatever you grill tonight, you will have extra for tomorrow's dinner where you can either do a repeat or serve this on top of rice noodles for a different meal.  In fact, I marinate several nights worth and just cook two batches and freeze the rest.  Can you imagine how less stressful your evenings at home would be if all you had to do is warm up the chicken, throw in some fresh veggies and serve it on rice that you had ready sitting in the rice cooker? 

List of Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 30 Boneless Chicken Thighs Thawed  ( I go to Costco and buy the packets of fresh boneless chicken thighs.  They come in packs of six.  There are five thighs in each pouch.   This may sound like a lot of meat, but remember, we're making extra and thigh meat isn't as large and perfectly shaped as breast meat.)

• 1/4 Cup Lemongrass  (micrograted) Use the meaty part of the stalk. 
• 6-8 Cloves of Garlic (micrograted)
• 2 Tbsp Fresh Ginger (micrograted)
• 3  Tbsp Dried Onion Flakes
• 3 Tbsp Garlic Powder
• 1/2  Cup Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Fish Sauce
• 1/2 Cup Honey
• 1/4 Cup Sesame Oil

 For the slaw:

• 1/2 Green Cabbage 
• 1/4 Red Cabbage
• 3 Carrots
• 1 Cucumber

Vietnamese Fish Sauce Vinaigrette: (This will last you a while.)

• 1 Cup Fish Sauce
• 1 1/4  Cup Vinegar (White or Apple Cider)
• 1 Cup Water 
• 2 Cups Sugar

Put everything together and stir until sugar dissolves.  I mix this in a liquid measuring cup with a spout and then just pour into an empty fish sauce bottle.

Toppings:

• Crushed Peanuts            
• Cilantro
• Fried Shallots (you can find this at any Asian store)
• Sauteed Scallions

STEP 1:  RICE- Cook rice in rice cooker.  I usually put 3 cups of rice in our cooker and have it cooking while I work on the rest of dinner. 

STEP 2:  MARINADE- Preheat oven to 450. Combine marinade ingredients in a large bowl.  Stir well.   Then add meat, stir a few times to coat evenly and let it sit for a few minutes while you work on the veggies and fish sauce.

STEP 3:  VEGGIES- Thinly slice cabbage with a mandoline slicer.  Then switch to the julienne blade and julienne the carrots and cucumbers.  You want everything to be nice and thin, but not paper thin.  Toss veggies in a bowl and set aside.  Next,  rinse cilantro and spin dry in salad spinner.


STEP 4: COOK MEAT- Stir meat a few more times.  Spray a generous amount of nonstick spray on a stainless steel skillet..  Brown the chicken on both sides on medium high heat.  The results you're looking for is somewhere in between browned and blackened. Then place the skillet  in the oven for 10-12 minutes.  This is how I cook most of my Vietnamese BBQ meats.  Grilling for the entire time just makes it too dry and the carmelization you're trying to achieve just turns into char due to the type of marinade.  (Plus, I don't have the time to stand over anything and babysit it.)  While chicken is in the oven, get started on the toppings. 

STEP 5:  TOPPINGS- Chop up a bunch of scallions, place in a bowl,  sprinkle some salt, then generously spray a non-stick spray over it and stir.  Cover with a napkin and place in microwave for 30-60 seconds.  Scallions should look green and soft when you're done.  (If I'm pressed for time, I just take my shears and cut up a bunch and use them fresh.  There's very little difference in taste.)  Finally, chop up some peanuts in your mini chopper.  (If you love Asian cuisine, you had best invest in a chopper now and ALWAYS have crushed peanuts sitting in it!)

STEP 6: PLATING- Once the chicken is done, take it out and let it sit for a few minutes while you start plating.  Here's the order for layering:

• Rice- on the bottom
• Scallions-  a thin layer on top of the rice
• Fresh slaw- a generous handful
• Chicken Strips- Use kitchen shears and get a nice clean cut minus the dirty chopping board.
• Peanuts
• Cilantro- Make sure it's dry.  Bunch it up with your hands and cut with shears. 
• Optional:  Fresh cut chilli peppers, fried shallots or Sriracha ( aka Vietnamese Ketchup). 

I can't tell you enough how loved this recipe is in our home.   Always have some fresh slaw, fish sauce and peanuts handy.  If you do, dinner is only 15-20 minutes away.

NOTES:

•  Lemongrass:  This is the secret to making the meat stand out.  I even throw in a few extra slivers right before I toss the chicken in the skillet. 

• Fish Sauce:  I always make mine strong so the boys don't end up consuming it all in one sitting.  Yes, this has happened many many times.  They would sip it as soup if you let them!  Once you've made it,  you can customize according to your taste buds. 

• Non-Stick Spray:  I use this 99.9% of the time.  You really don't need oil to cook.  Plus, think of all the calories you shave by doing this!  

•  Storing Veggies:  Make sure you eat whatever cucumbers you slice. Sliced/julienne cucumbers go bad fast. So make sure to not store it with your sliced cabbage and carrots, which hold very well for several days in the fridge.  

I'm so excited about having others duplicate this dish!  Please let me know how this turns out for you!

Kitchen Tools to Make Life Easier

Before we start cooking there are a few tools that come in very handy and will save you a lot of time and hassle.  Here they are prioritized:

1) Mandoline Slicer

I personally am not a big fan of chopping, slicing and dicing (especially when it comes to those nasty onions.)  However, if you give me a mandoline slicer, I'll slice until I run out of veggies and look for more!  Those of you who have one know exactly what I'm talking about!  This is the only tool I use multiple times a day every day! It doesn't matter how much you spend, you will get your money's worth and then some. 


2)  Slap Chop (or any other hand chopper)

In Asian cuisine, you use alot of fresh garlic, ginger and crushed peanuts (especially Vietnamese and Thai).  I use 2 Slap Chops and have them handy at all times.  One I use for mincing/chopping wet ingredients and the other for dry ingredients like nuts.  That way you're not stuck washing then wiping dry the blades every time.  They're inexpensive, easy to clean, less hassle and a great time saver.  The guy on the infomercial knows what he's talking about it!

3)  Rice Cooker/Warmer

Rice is such a universal side dish. Almost every nationality eats rice.  I personally would rather eat the uncooked grains than sit over a pot and watch rice cook.  Thank goodness for rice cookers.  The one our family uses is a Tiger rice cooker.  It looks very Asian, but it's been with us for over 10 years and still working beautifully.  You can spend a lot or very little for one.  The key is to have one that keeps the rice warm for at least several hours without drying it.  I prefer Tiger cookers since they seem to have a better steaming system that cooks the rice faster and keeps it more moist.  You can also cook those prepackaged rice/pasta boxes in it as well.  While the rice is cooking or warming, you can work on the rest of your dinner.  Rice is cheap and it doesn't have any nasty trans fat, oil, butter or preservatives either.  I almost always have a batch of rice sitting in the cooker or fridge to make fried rice for the boys.  Total time and money saver! 

4)  Salad Spinner

If you don't have a salad spinner, it's time to buy one.  Our diet today is so heavy in starch and protein that fresh green veggies and herbs are used more as a garnish than a side.  You must know that every meal plan  that will be posted on this site has been prepared for my family.  It is extremely important to me that we not only eat well, but healthy at the same time.  I've got killer salad recipes that are so good, you'll want to make it the main course and skip the starch!  But you can't make it with soggy lettuce!

You can click on the links below and purchase these tools directly from Ai's Kitchen Store on Amazon. 



 

Welcome to My Cooking Blog!

Welcome to my personal cooking blog!  I love to cook for the people I love and I want to help you do the same regardless if you're a stay-at-home or a working mom. 

Although Asian cuisine is my specialty you'll also see Indian, Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, American and a lot of fusion dishes. I didn't always love to cook. But as I got older I've found that cooking has been another form to express my love to those I love. (By the way, Ai ("I") means love in Mandarin/Cantonese as well--a nice little coincidence.)

My husband Dave and I have been together since 1998. We have two beautiful boys-Liem (11 yrs old) and Mason who's just 5 months old.  I love them all so much. Dave is an amazing father and husband. However, I didn't always appreciate him and our marriage wasn't always peachy. But we weathered the storm and are both better and stronger as individuals and as a team. He's an IT Manager and also in the Virginia National Guard. Now that I've learned to appreciate my husband and seeing how hard he works to support our family, a once trivial task like cooking dinner has become an opportunity for me to create a culinary masterpiece to express my love and gratitude for the man who has always loved me despite my flaws and mistakes. I can't verbalize the joy I feel to hear my boys tell me a dish I made is the best they've ever eaten. I live for that!

If you love to eat all kinds of food and share the same desire to prepare quality meals for your family, then this is your home!

My objective is to help you:

Try new dishes.

Running out of ideas for dinner?  Tired of the same old pizza, spaghetti, casserole or baked chicken? I can show you how to make new fancy and exotic dishes from the same ingredients you are already using plus introduce you to new ones you will love.  Sometimes all we need is a few ideas to get us started. 

Increase your efficiency in the kitchen.

Many families don't eat at home because they think it takes too much time to cook a home meal. But it actually takes the same amount of time, if not less, to prepare a healthy, well-rounded gourmet meal at home. You just need to learn how to overlap a couple of tasks. For example, you can roast the veggies in the oven while you boil the pasta. Both take 10 minutes. Add another 10-15 minutes for the meat and voila! Dinner is served in 30 minutes or less without the stress!

Save money.

It can cost a family of four $50-75 to go out to eat nowadays. That's not including tip either! I know families who eat out almost every night. The majority of them are also hurting financially. Well, no wonder! Do the math. $50 x 5 days = $250/week. That's $1,000 per month! You can cook dinner for your family for way less than half of that and use that few hundred dollars to pay off debt, invest or save!

Enjoy life with those you love.

An ideal night for our family is to eat outside on our deck with the kids and talk and goof off. After the kids go to bed it's date night. Dave and I break out the pinot grigio with some cheese, crackers and mango and just enjoy each other. When I visit my family in Northern Virginia, it's the same concept only on a much larger scale. And much louder too! But isn't that what life is all about? Building and maintaining relationships? And guess what? Food is the electricity for it all! So let's get cookin!

Dinner at my mom's. 
  What happens when a bunch of Asians get together? FOOD!