Baked Chinese Chicken and Rice

- Chicken thighs. I have used boneless, skinless thighs for speed and ease - especially if you have younger children who will need you to de-bone theirs for them before you can eat yourself! If you wanted to use bone-in, skin-on thighs, I haven't tested this and they probably will need at least another 10 minutes to cook, and in which time the rice and veg might be overcooked.
- Chicken Stock. Use your regular chicken stock, or if eating with a weaning baby or toddler, low or no-salt chicken stock.
- Rice. My recipe timings are based on using white basmati rice. If you use a different type of rice I can't guarantee results.
- Frozen Vegetable Mix. I use a classic frozen vegetable mix of peas, sweetcorn, green beans and carrots. This mix is widely available in the UK and USA.
- Spring Onions (or green onions). You'll need just four, and thinly slice the white and light green part.
- Seasonings. You will need toasted sesame oil, garlic powder, soy sauce (or reduced-salt soy if sharing with a little one), rice wine vinegar (or white wine vinegar), honey or agave.

I would say yes, so long as they are in pretty small pieces. If you only have peas or sweetcorn, that would be fine. Anything in the peas, sweetcorn, green beans, carrots and broccoli arena should be fine. The classic mixed vegetables (peas, sweetcorn, green beans and carrots) I have used are pretty common in supermarkets and grocery stores the UK and US.

I haven't tested this, and bone-in skin-on thighs would take longer to cook. If you wanted to try this, I would recommend that at the cook end time, remove the chicken thighs, fold the vegetables into the rice and then re-top with the thighs. Return to the oven and cook until they reach an internal temperature of 75ºc/165ºc. Folding the vegetables through the rice will hopefully keep it from overcooking on the top and edges.

You can use either a large oven proof dish, any shape will do. Otherwise a shallow wide-bottomed casserole pot or dutch oven would also work.

The beauty of this meal is that there isn't much to prepare, but of what little there is, you can prepare the following; the spring onions - wash, chop and refrigerate, and the sauce to drizzle over the chicken (chill this too).

You can increase the amount of chicken thighs, but not the rice and vegetables. You can use 600-800g chicken thighs. If you wanted to feed more people with this recipe, use two oven dishes and make two batches concurrently.

Baked Chinese Chicken & Rice one pot is suitable for those on nut, dairy and egg-free diets. If you are gluten-free switch the soy sauce for tamari.

You can, but as this meal doesn't have a sauce I wouldn't really recommend it as microwaving it will dry everything out. If you really did want too, try chopping up the chicken and adding a little chicken stock, then stir it through before you microwave it. You can store it in the fridge for 3 days (cook day + 2), in an air tight container. You can also freeze the leftovers and then defrost for 24 hours in the fridge before reheating.

For more on safe food storage read here >