This is the calm before the storm. Typhoon Karding will be making landfall tonight and I haven’t done any grocery shopping today 🥴 It will be rainy and windy as shit tomorrow until Monday.
While the eye will not be in Metro Manila, we will be around Signal #2 tomorrow as Typhoon Karding crosses Luzon to exit West Philippine Sea by Monday. Better charge laptops, phones, and electric fans.
Today was sunny and I thought it will stay that way all throughout today. So I took my time and cooked chicken rice for the first time on Instant Pot.
Who would have thought Hainanese chicken rice could be this easy?
You need 1) Instant Pot 2) chicken rice mix (I used to buy them in jars from Hi-Top Aurora). Prepare washed rice but only 3/4 the usual amount of water that you put when cooking using a rice cooker. Dump and stir chicken rice mix.
Wash chicken thighs very well, like there should be no trace of blood and impurities. Season chicken thighs reeaaaalllly well by scrubbing it with a lot of salt. Place them on top of the soaking uncooked rice. Place halved shallots and big chunks of ginger in between the chicken thighs.
Set Instant Pot on “Rice” mode. It should pressure cook at “Low” for 14 mins.
Watch some Youtube videos. Your InstantPot will be calling for you in about 30 mins. You let it be because you aren’t done watching some more YT videos. Then you realize electricity is expensive so you attend to your chicken rice.
Lovely.
I didn’t have to put the chicken in an ice bath to stop the cooking process because I was lazy. I didn’t have to rub sesame oil on the chicken skin for that brownish oily glow.
However, I missed the soup part. There was no way you can have soup this way. So you can make a soup batch by sauteing shallots and lots of red ginger (or whatever color you have) or galangal, add a chicken bullion cube and boil all these until the root veggies almost disintegrate. Add chopped green onions.
It was so tasty that I went over my one-cup-rice-a-day diet. I needed to walk 6-7km today to burn the calories but of course the weather didn’t cooperate. It rained heavily at 4pm just as I was about to leave. I waited and waited for it to end but nope, it only stopped when it was already dark.
No choice but I have to do indoor workout again.
Not bad for indoor workout, almost 260 kcal burned, equivalent to a 5km walk under an hour.
My drinks with the friend is cancelled because he’s meeting his dad tonight so we arranged it for next week with more friends. I hope there would be no typhoon yet…Next weekend is our long weekend at the beach. ❤