Ground chicken is a versatile ingredient, offering a leaner alternative to beef and pork. It can be incorporated into spaghetti, stir-fried in rice bowls, or used in mapo tofu. Various recipes highlight its adaptability, including meatballs and soborodon, which provide quick and visually appealing meals. Mapo tofu can also be made with ground chicken as a substitute for pork, showcasing the flavor versatility achieved with spices like doubanjiang and Sichuan peppercorn. This flexibility makes ground chicken a staple in many households, especially for quick weeknight dinners.
If I'm being honest, my go-to application for ground chicken is meatballs: these basic ones from Smitten Kitchen, any sort of tsukune (Japanese izakaya-style meatballs), or experimenting with new recipes... But I'm going to shout out a recipe that involves even less work than meatballs: soborodon. This colorful, simple donburi makes good use of ground chicken's delicate flavor; I love the speediness of the recipe for a weeknight meal (and I usually have the ingredients on hand)... It also makes a terrific next-day bento.
Mapo tofu is traditionally made with pork, but sometimes when I have the craving for this spicy, numbing dish - and only have a pound of ground chicken in the freezer - I use chicken instead. It still works! For me, the highlight of this recipe is the doubanjiang (spicy chile bean sauce) and the Sichuan peppercorn; the rest I've adapted with great success. The whole dish comes together in half an hour which is why it's on constant rotation in my household.
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