Monday, May 16, 2011

What's for supper? Vietnamese Baked Chicken Thighs

Last night's dinner menu:

Vietnamese Chicken Thighs, adapted from this recipe on A Year of Slow Cooking,which was adapted from a post on Sunday Nite Dinner
Baked potatoes, broccoli, carrot sticks, chow mein noodles
Watermelon slices, brownies, and pie (thanks, Grandpa Squirrel).

I was hesitant about making this chicken dish, because I've never cooked with fish sauce before.  I had a Vietnamese housemate during university who pretty much lived on the stuff (fish sauce, not chicken), but I wasn't sure how it would go over here.  Also, Mr. Fixit is not crazy about bone-in thighs, because they do tend to be greasy. But I bought some fish sauce, and we tried it (in the oven, not the slow cooker), and it was very good--the skin browned nicely (probably the sugar?), and the thighs stayed together enough after baking that they could be lifted out of the grease, so that was a plus. We'll probably make this again.

Steph's recipe calls for 4 to 6 thighs, and our package had 8, so I doubled all the sauce ingredients except the pepper and the garlic. 

Here's our version.

Vietnamese-style Baked Chicken Thighs

8 bone-in chicken thighs (ours were still partly frozen)
3 tbsp. low-sodium soy sauce
3 tbsp. fish sauce (we used Taste of Thai brand)
1 tbsp. white sugar
1/2 tsp. black pepper
4 cloves chopped garlic
2 tbsp. canola oil

Place the thighs, skin side up, in a large casserole dish.  Mix the seasonings, garlic and oil together and pour over the chicken.  Cover and bake until done; the temperature and time can vary depending on the size of the chicken thighs, how frozen they are, and how much time you have.  I started it at 350 degrees and then turned it down to 325 degrees for awhile.  It was Sunday afternoon and we had lots of time.

Allow at least one thigh per adult eater and more likely two.

1 comment:

coffeemamma said...

Mmm... love fish sauce! One of our favourite summer salads is shredded Thai chicken over whole wheat spaghettini- yum!

And thanks for the recipe- I'm trying it next week!