Last night, using this recipe from Slug is Doug, I cooked up some teriyaki chicken balls with snow peas – but no edame.
The verdict: Spouse pronounced it delicious, and I agreed. It will accordingly be making a return trip to our table – not just the leftovers, but freshly cheffed up batch!
For those of you who are, like me, culinarily challenged, a few notes. It may seem basic and stupid, but then again you need to consider the source of this information: when the recipe calls for “ground chicken”, it is important for you to understand that supermarkets sell chicken already ground up, in the same way as beef becomes ground beef. That’s why they call it “ground chicken”. You do NOT need to purchase chicken breasts and then wonder how the hell you’re going to “grind” it. This is a fact that I learned just a touch late; as a result there are two lovely chicken breasts sitting in our fridge, awaiting a trip into the skillet with some butter chicken sauce.
Second, you may not be able to find “edame”. I went to two different grocery stores and scoured several areas of both stores to no avail. In the end, I decided (after a telephone consultation with Doug) to substitute peas for the edame. I don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like with the soy beans, but the version I made was tasty enough.
Third, at the moment of truth – when the meatballs hit the skillet – I hesitated for some reason about putting them all in together, instead choosing to cook them in two batches. That was a mistake; I had to add more oil to the skillet (with the attendant nutritional consequences) and it took twice as long to cook the meatballs, which left my rice a bit of a sticky mess as it awaited the balance of the entree.
Last, the recipe tells you to combine the shallots, ginger and chicken together in a large bowl and to make 16 meat balls. Looking at the bowl full of ingredients, I found myself wondering somewhat how large each meatball should be; I found that using a golf ball as my approximate size model worked out pretty well. When I make this recipe again, I will be chopping the shallots more finely and following the directions more closely to grate the ginger – I chopped up my ginger in a garlic-chopping whatsit that we recently acquired, which was okay, but I was somewhat suspicious about whether there was an even distribution of ginger throughout the ground chicken owing to the somewhat largish chunks created by our garlic thingamajig. You may use any pressure cooker, not only Instant Pot.
My overall impression was that this dish was quite easy to prepare. I suspect it will take me about half the amount of time next time. My next recipe request? Doug mentioned something about making extra meat balls and turning them in to chicken tacos. Tell me more…
I’m glad to see that you tried out the recipe. On the lack of Edamame front, I find that when I go to the grocery store and find that they don’t have a specific ingredient that I am looking for it is helpful to talk to a manager or the customer service desk and make a request for that ingredient to be brought in. If enough people ask or if you ask often enough that item may soon show up on the shelf. It does not always work because of lack of demand but sometimes you get a helpful grocer that will special order items for you and let you know when they are in.
As for the extra meatballs, the suggestion was to freeze cooked ones and use them later on a night when you know that you are not going to be able to spend more time than the time that it takes to reheat them and put them on rice or noodles or whatever you have lying around. Perhaps with a favourite store bought sauce. Just remember to take them out of the freezer the night before or morning of and put them in the fridge to defrost.
Use any extra ground meat for the tacos. I have a recipe for Taco Seasoning that works well that I’ll post over at the site soon. Just remember to use the meat soon or freeze it for a later occasion.
As for your issue with the ground chicken, I suppose that you could have taken those breasts and chopped them finely with a knife and the result would be similar. Mom may have suggested putting the breasts in a food processor but I think that the meat turns a bit too much into a paste very quickly that way. You could always invest in your own meat grinder for such occasions and that way you know exactly what is going into your ground meat. I’m actually considering it. MMMMMmeat. http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Hand-operated-4-pound-Cast-Iron-Meat-Grinder/3112466/product.html?cid=