Asian Chicken with Molasses Glaze and Rice is a great combination of molasses, ginger, soy sauce, and garlic. This is easy to make, a dish perfect for a weeknight and ready in about an hour.
My son loves Asian food and we designated Saturday as our Asian night. His favorite is Kung Pao Chicken and he also loves my Asian Wings. We just got back from vacation and I had not gone shopping yet so I was very low on honey and only had thighs and legs on hand in the freezer. I realized that I needed to make a lot of sauce for larger pieces of chicken and knew I could use molasses instead of honey still getting the sweet taste I wanted.
When you make this Asian Chicken with Molasses Glaze, you will want to taste it as you go along to adjust ingredients as needed. I like it relatively sweet, but not overpowering, so rice vinegar is also in the glaze. The best thing to do is to make the glaze and let it sit for a while so all the flavors meld before putting it on the chicken and cooking it. I let mine sit for half an hour while I did some household chores.
You can use whatever pieces of chicken you happen to have. This would be great for wings, or a whole cut-up chicken. You can also cook this in a large casserole pan or roasting pan if you have a lot of chicken.
Rice
For the rice, I used Uncle Ben’s Rice because that is my son’s favorite. You may use the rice you prefer, and you can add other ingredients to it if you wish. The Penzey’s Justice is really perfect because it is onion based and gives great flavor. Feel free to use chicken stock if you have it. I like using Better Than Bouillon chicken base because I don’t have to worry about wasting stock that I don’t use. The sesame seeds are optional, as is the green onion, but I think it looks very nice for presentation.
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Molasses Glazed Asian Chicken With Rice
Equipment
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Ingredients
- 2 chicken legs
- 2 chicken thighs
Glaze
- ½ cup molasses
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon powdered Ginger
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Rice
- 1 cup rice
- 2 cups water
- 1 *heaping teaspoon chicken base
- 1 teaspoon freeze-dried cilantro
- 1 teaspoon Justice
- 1 teaspoon unsalted butter
Instructions
- Mix all the sauce ingredients together at set aside at least 10 minutes.
- Put the chicken in a cast-iron skillet. Pour sauce over chicken and bake at 300 for 30 minutes.
- Turn the chicken. Raise the heat to 350, bake for 20 minutes. Turn and raise heat to 400 and bake for 10 minutes.
- Check and turn and raise heat another 50 degrees until the sauce has thickened and the chicken is done - about 5 minutes. Watch this carefully so it does not burn.
- While the chicken is in its last 20 minutes make the rice.
- Put the rice, water, base, seasonings, and butter into a small pan.
- Bring the mixture to a boil then reduce to a slow simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Check on it at 15 minutes.
- Plate the rice on a platter then arrange the chicken on top. Garnish with sesame seeds and green onion.
