Chinese Chicken and Broccoli Recipes

Take-Out Fake-Out: Chicken and Broccoli my all time favorite comfort food!

Chicken and broccoli, hands down, is my all time favorite Chinese takeout dish. This is the one dish I would always get when my mom would order takeout on the nights she didn’t feel like cooking or whenever I ate at a food court. She never had to ask me what I wanted because it would always be the same answer. I think this is actually my favorite dish of all time. Meaning, I could eat this every day for a week and not be sick of it. I just love the combination of broccoli and chicken together along with the salty sweet sauce.

Most kids don’t like broccoli and refuse to eat it, but me? No. Loved it. My mom, when she would make this dish from scratch, would have to make it a certain way otherwise I wouldn’t eat it. Haha, I’m so high maintenance, it’s going to be karma and I’ll have ridiculously picky kids. I wouldn’t eat mushy broccoli — you know the ones that are steamed til they’re super soft and have lost their bright green color or have even gone limp? My mom would always have to blanch the broccoli in boiling water for about 5 minutes or so and then throw them in an ice water bath so the broccoli, for yours truly here, would be ultra crispy and still bright green. I refuse to eat them raw, which is why cooking broccoli for me is such a pain since I don’t like them cooked fully nor do I like them undercooked :) Luckily I know how to cook it.

Another night, another question of what to cook for dinner. I had broccoli and I had chicken defrosted. Easy. I threw together a simple sauce, that ended up being kind of like a teriyaki sauce, and cooked it with the chicken and broccoli and then poured it over a bed of rice. Oh simplicity at its best. It turned out to be so good. Jason was impressed by how well it all turned out on a whim and I’m glad it turned out great too :)

Yields 2

15 minPrep Time

10 minCook Time

25 minTotal Time

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced into 1" cubes
• 1 cup frozen broccoli florets
• For the sauce:
• 3/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp. sesame oil
• 2 tbsp. rice vinegar
• 1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch

Instructions

1. In a medium saucepot, bring water to a boil and blanch the broccoli florets, about 3-5 minutes. Drain in a colander and run ice water on broccoli to stop the cooking process. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for the sauce and throw in the chicken cubes and let marinate for 10 minutes.
3. In a large skillet, add a little vegetable oil then heat to medium high heat. With a slotted spoon, scoop out the chicken from the sauce and cook it until cooked through. Throughout the cooking process, spoon the leftover sauce onto the chicken until you have a good amount of sauce that you'd be able to use for putting over rice and enough to coat the chicken. The sauce will naturally thicken as you cook because of the added cornstarch.
4. When chicken is done, add the broccoli and turn the heat down to low. Stir well to mix then remove from heat.