Thursday, June 22, 2017

Chai Chicken

Bhakti Chai is a local company, and I was recently treated to a tour of the facility thanks to Sprouts (a grocery store chain, if you're not familiar).

As soon as I sampled the product at the factory, I thought it would make a great marinade for chicken. Maybe I was just hungry.

Yeah, I know. it's a drink. It's not a marinade. But the ginger-forward flavor just wanted to be used in cooking. So ... we got to take some samples home, and after having a little pick-me-up, I decided to give Chai-Chai-Chai Chicken a try.

But, being me, I didn't actually do a marinade. Nope. I bought some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and I cooked them sous vide.

I know I post a LOT of sous vide recipes ... but that's because they're so easy and hands-off. Most of the time, I finish the recipe with a quick sear on the stove or maybe a broil in the oven, but that's all I have to do. With the chicken breasts, I just sliced and served.

Let me say here that sealing a sous vide bag that has a lot of liquid in it can be a little tricky. I didn't add a LOT of liquid, but if you're skeevy about having any liquid at all to deal with, just freeze some of your marinade mixture - in this case the chai - and put that into the sous vide bag.

If you've got a giant thick hockey puck of frozen stuff in your sous vide bag, you might want to extend the cooking time a little bit, but if you froze a 1/2 cup in a baggie so it's thin and flat, it's going to thaw pretty quickly. And seriously, you don't need a lot of marinade or sauce or whatever in the bag.

You can cook each chicken breast in its own bag (which is great if you're adjusting flavors to people's personal preferences) or cook them all together in one bag. Just make sure the breasts are in one layer in the bag, if you're doing a bunch of them together, so cooking is even.

Bhakti Chai Chicken Breasts

  • Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • Bhaki Chai Concentrate (I used the original version)
Let's assume we're doing just one chicken breast, okay?

If you've got those giant chicken breasts, one breast might be enough for two people, depending on what you're serving with it. If it's really huge, feel free to add another 15 minutes to the cooking time.

So, put the chicken breast in the sous vide bag and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the Bhakti Chai - depending on how comfy you are with dealing with wet ingredients in your sous vide bag. If you were smart enough to freeze some of the chai ahead of time, you're so much smarter than me.

Add a pinch of salt, if you like.

Vacuum carefully and seal. Use the wet sealing feature, if yours has that option. If you want to be extra sure you have a good seal, wipe the recently-sealed end of the bag to remove any moisture, and seal it again on the end.

All done? Good.

Set up the sous vide for 150 degrees. Chuck that chicken in there and set for 1 hour (or a little longer, if it's one of the huge breasts that they sell these days).

Now go and do something fun.

When the chicken is done, remove it from the bag. Slice and serve.

That's it. No muss, no fuss. I didn't even bother browning the breast afterwards, but you can do that if you like. This was also great cold ... try it on a salad with an Asian-style dressing and some bean sprouts and snow peas - or maybe some of crispy fried wonton skins. Yum!

About Bhakti Chai

Bhakit Chai is a great example of a small business started by one passionate person. The original Chai product still exists, but the company has expanded the product line to include more flavors, a ready-to-drink line, and some fizzy chai drinks as well.

The fizzy drinks might have been my favorite, since I'm a fan of ginger ale and similar fizzy drinks that are less sweet and more refreshing.

But that doesn't mean I didn't like the others. The ready-to-drink iced chai is perfect if you just want to grab one and go. That's them, in the photo on the right. Lots of options, including one coffee-chai drink.

The concentrate is what you need in the fridge for drinking at home. I've been making mine with about 1/3 chai concentrate and 2/3 with either milk or almond milk, but of course you can adjust that to your preference. And you can drink it hot or cold.

If you're me, you can also use the concentrate in recipes. I was thinking that rice with a little chai would be really really nice with a stir-fry dinner. And chai rice pudding is awesome. Simmered down to concentrate the flavor even more, it would be a nice sauce for either sweet or savory.

While you can find some of the Bhakti Chai products on Amazon, you probably want to just go look for them at the grocery store, since they're a perishable product. Like, you know, go to Sprouts and buy them there.

One of the best parts about going to tours of different companies is seeing how things are made. here's a super-short video of the bottling line at Bhakti Chai. It was cool watching it work. Yum, chai!


Thanks to Sprouts for sponsoring and arranging the tour and to Bhakti Chai for being such a great host (and for the samples!).



Yum