It’s like FRIED RICE and Chinese Chicken, all made in one pot!! You’ll love the savoury flavour of the rice, and how the Asian chicken marinade adds great flavour with just a quick 10 minute marinade.
Plus, there’s a load of veggies mixed through so this One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice is a complete meal!
CHINESE CHICKEN AND RICE – A ONE POT WONDER!
Hands up everyone who would make fried rice more often but you never seem to have day old cooked rice when the craving hits?
If you’ve got your hand raised high – then this one is for YOU!! The rice in this recipe tastes like fried rice but it’s made from scratch using uncooked rice. With the added bonus of a tasty Asian marinated chicken AND veggies to make a complete dinner in one pot!
DOUBLE DUTY: ASIAN CHICKEN MARINADE AND SAUCE
This One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice starts off with a simple Asian chicken marinade that doubles as the sauce to flavour the rice.
The Sauce-Marinade is made with just soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine (see recipe for subs), Oyster Sauce and pepper. In my world, this is the bare minimum I would put in a Chinese sauce or marinade – whether a stir fry sauce, noodles or a pouring sauce.
Anything less and the flavour will taste flat. Both Oyster Sauce and the Chinese cooking wine are what adds complexity to this sauce.
If you can’t get or can’t consume Oyster Sauce, the best substitute in this recipe is Hoisin Sauce. You will get a slight Five Spice flavour from the Hoisin and it’s fantastic!
The Sauce-Marinade is used as a quick 10 minute marinade for the chicken before being tipped into the pot to flavour the rice. You could absolutely marinade overnight if you want – but you’ll get enough flavour in the dish with just 10 minutes.
HOW I MAKE CHINESE CHICKEN AND RICE
This is a straightforward recipe but there’s a few things I specifically do to achieve the tastiest outcome with the least effort – this is, after all, a quick and easy meal but that’s no reason to skimp on quality!
A) SEPARATE STEMS FROM LEAFY PARTS of Asian greens.The purpose of this so we can add the stems to cook with the rice, then just wilt the leafy part using residual heat while the rice is resting.
Apply this rule to any vegetables you use in this recipe. Cook things like carrots, peas, capsicum/bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and corn with the rice, and wilt delicate things like baby spinach while the rice is resting.
B) SEAR marinated chicken to brown the outside, but keep it raw on the inside – it will finish cooking with the rice. Caramelisation not only adds flavour to the chicken but the browning left in the pot forms part of the flavour base for the rice.
C) Place the CHICKEN ON TOP of the rice to finish cooking while the rice cooks. This way, the juices drip into the rice and we can preserve the caramelised surface on the chicken which would sweat off if fully submerged in the liquid.
D) REST RICE and WILT Leafy Greens. Resting the rice for 10+ minutes is a key step with any rice dish. That is how to ensure your rice comes out fluffy rather than gluey.
In this particular recipe, I use the residual heat trapped in the pot while the rice is resting to wilt the leafy part of the Asian greens.
Then, once the rice is rested and ready for fluffing, the leafy greens are wilted and can be tossed through the rice.
HIGHLY VERSATILE RECIPE
Like many recipes on my site, this recipe lends itself to all sorts of variations. It can take more vegetables, it can be made with mince meat (ground meat) rather than chicken pieces – just cook it with the sauce then proceed with the recipe as written.
You could even make it with fish and/or prawns/shrimp – but I’d cook them separately first and only return them to the pot while the rice is resting just to warm them through.
I often get messages on recipes where readers hesitantly say “I hope it’s ok that I tinkered with your recipe….” and I always respond – “YES OF COURSE!!!” I love that you can make my recipes your own and adapt it to your taste.
So if you tinker with this recipe, tell me what you do! I want to know! – Nagi x
More One-Pot Chicken and Rice
Baked Chicken and Rice (a reader favourite!)
One Pot Greek Chicken and Lemon Rice (another firm reader favourite!)
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
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One Pot Chinese Chicken and Rice
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 tsp ginger , grated
- 1 onion , finely chopped
- 500g (1 lb) chicken thighs , skinless boneless, halved (Note 1)
- 1 big bunch Chinese Broccoli with thick stems (Note 2)
Rice:
- 1 cup (180g) uncooked white rice (Note 3)
- 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) chicken broth , low salt
Sauce:
- 2 cloves garlic , small, chopped
- 2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or Mirin (Note 4)
- 3 tbsp oyster sauce (or sub with Hoisin)
- 1 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce (Note 5)
- 1/4 tsp white pepper (or black)
Garnish:
- green onion , sliced
- Sesame seeds
Instructions
- Mix Sauce in a large bowl. Add chicken and set aside to marinate for 10 minutes to overnight.
- Cut Chinese broccoli stems cut into 2.5 cm/1″ pieces, leafy part 5cm/2.5cm pieces.
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Remove chicken from marinade, shaking off excess marinade – RESERVE marinade!
- Cook both sides until golden – about 90 seconds on each side, don’t let them burn! Remove chicken onto plate.
- Add a touch of oil if pot is dry. Add onion, garlic and ginger, cook for 2 minutes until tinged with gold.
- Add rice, stir to coat grains in oil. Add broth, reserved Marinade and Chinese broccoli stems. Stir.
- Place chicken across the top, pour in juices pooled on plate. Cover, bring to simmer then lower heat to medium.
- Cook for 12 -15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed (tilt pot to check).
- Remove from heat. Working quickly, scatter Chinese broccoli leaves across surface, clamp lid back on.
- Rest for 10 minutes. Remove lid, toss rice and serve, garnished with sesame seeds and green onions. A dollop of your favourite chilli paste wouldn’t go astray either!
Recipe Notes:
Other Asian Greens – like pak choy, bok choi etc Cut per recipe but scatter across top of chicken, do not stir into liquid (because they’re more delicate so will cook to mush if mixed in liquid).
Frozen or fresh diced veg – stir into liquid and cook per recipe.
Cauliflower – stir into liquid and cook per recipe. 3. Rice – Any ordinary white rice is suitable for this recipe. Long grain, medium grain, short grain, Japanese rice, sushi rice, jasmine, basmati. Long grain, jasmine and basmati will yield the fluffiest rice, the others are a bit stickier as they are supposed to be. Recipe is NOT suitable for: paella or risotto rice. Brown rice will require the following adjustments: Add extra 0.5 cup of water, do not add stems or chicken in. Cover and cook rice for 30 minutes on low. Stir through stems and top with chicken. Cover and cook 10 minutes, remove from heat, follow recipe to wilt leafy part and stand 10 minutes before serving, 4. Chinese Cooking wine – read here for more information. Sold at Asian grocery stores and the Asian section of some supermarkets (Coles, Woolies in Australia). Dry sherry and mirin are excellent substitutes. For a non alcoholic version, leave it out and add 1/2 tsp chicken stock powder into Sauce. 5. Dark soy sauce has a more intense flavour and colour than light soy sauce and ordinary all purpose soy sauce. This is what stains the rice in this recipe. It can be substituted for light or all purpose soy sauce. 6. Nutrition per serving. To reduce salt, use low sodium soy sauce.
Nutrition Information:
LIFE OF DOZER
“Coffee for me, and a dog treat for Dozer!” I chirped, when I spied a cute jar of doggie treats at a coffee shop.
Little did I know – they were VEGAN dog treats. What is this world coming to?
Not that Dozer cared. (But I did. It was expensive!!!)
Loved this! The flavor profile is rich and flavorful, the chicken came out perfectly tender and juicy. My rice was a bit gummy but I think that was user error on my part, I still thoroughly enjoyed this recipe. How might I adjust it to have this with steamed rice? I’d love to still preserve the juices and drizzle on top of plain rice vs cooking the rice together. Excellent job, Nagi. Thank you for sharing!
What type of fish is suitable & what type of oil?
This was delicious. I only had chicken breast so that’s what I used, and I steamed a bag of broccoli on the side. I also sprinkled scallions on top. I was looking for an easy one pot dinner because we both had evening commitments and this was excellent. I had all of the ingredients on hand, no substitutions made, will absolutely make again.
Nice work on this one. My takeaway: saved me hours of digging around. I’ll be recommending this to others.
Hello. I accidentally bought. Bone in. Thighs at Walmart.com I’m unable to drive due to a serious medical condition .Which also leads me to nagi? Yum. Thanks
This was a massive hit and has been requested on weekly rotation. Delicious! P.S. The smell while the chicken cooked would have had the neighbours drooling.
Hi,
We tried this recipe have an issue with it not getting dry. We extended cooking for 10 minutes but it was still wet after, we just removed it from the heat as we are afraid that it will burn. The heat was not low, it was bubbling largely. Note that we have scaled up the ingredients for 6 portions and used stainless steel pot, if this could have affected the results. What could have been wrong with our cooking?
This was delicious and even the hubby who hates veg liked it. My only note is that it took me much longer than 30 mins total to make this (including prep). More like 45 mins.
This Chinese chicken with rice is delicious. Used the leftovers to stuff red bell pepper. Yum.
Love your recipes Nagi but this one didn’t really work for me. I had A LOT of reserved marinade (I only watched your video after cooking when I was retracing where I went wrong – I usually just read the recipe). I used the same marinade measurements as listed, which I added with the stock etc. However, I can see in your video you only have a small amount left over. Anyway, mine was really dark, rich and gluggy despite cooking way past the time. We ended up just cooking plain rice to serve with the chicken. Curious how much marinade you should reserve and add back in (2tbsp?). Thank you!
I love this recipe, and have made it probably a dozen times… But every time I go to use oyster sauce, I groan and spend the next 15mins trying to get it out of the bottle! I have tried so many brands but they’re all so thick and take forever to get a blob from the glass bottle, much less measure out 3 tablespoons somehow. Has anyone got any oyster sauce tricks, or found a brand easier to dispense?
Delicious and loved how simple it was. Certainly a dish that most good household cooks can do. Appreciate the help with dinner tonight.
I don’t usually write comments but this is really a keeper. Simple, quick and delicious. I added dried shiitake mushrooms ❤️because I love them.
When ever I am looking for an Asian menu, I could never go wrong with recipetineats! Thank you!
Spectacular!!!!!
Gave this a shot because my wife was nagging me about the amount of pak choy in the garden. I used tenderloin because I couldn’t get the right cut on the fly, and only marinated for 10 minutes because we were hungry. Nonetheless, the results were very satisfying! Will debone some thighs and marinate overnight next time, which will be soon! Will also double the rice amount as this was a savoury delight! Good on ya Nagi! As usual, your recipe delivers as promised!
Love this recipe! I was wary as my one pot rice and meat recipes never turn out like I want but this was perfect! I used just over 2kg of chicken thigh and 4 cups of rice:6 cups of chicken broth (big family!) It came out delicious and was a hit with everyone!
Next time I might try using 4 cups of rice:5 cups of broth as I felt it was jussstttt getting to be a little too soft or I will try it the same but use a standard measuring cup to measure the rice as this time I used the rice cooker cup and I think that’s why the ratio of rice to broth wasn’t right.
Love this recipe! Is it suitable to freeze? Thanks
Gave this a whirl on a whim because I love chicken and rice dishes! The chicken thighs were delicious! But the rice component came out wet and a bit too salty for my preference. I’d love to give it another go, but might up the rice a little, and cut the liquid with some water perhaps?
I just made this and we absolutely loved it! So easy, so delicious. Thanks for the recipe! Will definitely cook this again, and again …
I loved this dish as is and so did my husband. I wanted a bit of an extra kick though, so I topped mine with the Crispy Pepper Oil which put it over the top!!
Hi Nagi, my family and I love your website and recipes and we have your first book too.
I made this dish last night – made it for 8 people.
As I was making it I thought that the amount of fluid to rice was off but I followed the recipe and the liquid was too much, 360g rice to 7500ml stock too around 3 times the time to evaporate and made the rice and veg too soft.
The taste was great though and I will make it again but with either more rice or less fluid.
Many thanks and keep up the great work – you’re fabulous. x