Epic dinner of awesomeness :)

Every now and again, I stumble upon a recipe (or mash a few together and tweak it a bit) that earns a coveted spot on the "OOOH if I ever have a restaurant, this will go on my menu!" list. This one may be in my top 5. 

Asian Lemon Chicken Tenders with Garlic Fried Rice. So unbelievably good. And it's actually quite easy! I was thinking I could make a super batch and freeze some for later, but I may just make a large batch of the sauce and freeze packets of it. 

The recipe includes making your own buttermilk tenders (which I did) but next time I'm just going to use frozen chicken fingers to make it even quicker. (Maybe once I break down and buy a fryer it won't be such a mess to fry things on my stovetop.) 

If you want to make your own tenders you'll need: 

2 lb chicken breast, sliced into tenders

1 c. Buttermilk (or 1 tbs plus enough milk to make a cup total)

1 1/2 cups flour

Salt/pepper/garlic powder/onion powder

Sauce:

1/2 c. honey

1/3 c. soy sauce 

1/4 c. pineapple juice

1/4 c. packed brown sugar

2 tbs apple cider vinegar

2 tbs olive oil (or whatever oil you have)

1 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Juice of a lemon

(Optional - 1 tsp cornstarch and 1 tsp water, mixed to slurry to thicken sauce)

HM tenders:

Season flour.

Coat chicken in flour/milk/flour. 

Fry until golden brown. 

Drain on paper towels (or napkins or coffee filters or brown paper bags or just over a cooling rack)

Sauce: 

Combine everything.

Bring to boil and simmer 10 min until thickened. If it doesn't thicken as much as you'd like (or if you waited too long to put it on to cook and needed it done 5 minutes ago, stir the cornstarch/water slurry into boiling sauce for a minute or so and then lower heat for a couple minutes.)

Toss chicken in sauce. 

For the Garlic Fried Rice:

2 cups cooked rice

Half head shredded cabbage

2 carrots, shredded

Small onion, diced/chopped

Couple stalks celery, chopped small

Ton of garlic (I put in like 2 RV of the jarred stuff)

Butter/oil

Red wine*

Soy sauce*

(*If you don't have these or don't want to add them, it'll still be good!) 

Sauté veggies in oil til tender. Add a decent splash of red wine and boil a minute or two. Splash in some soy sauce. Mix in rice. Simmer til heated thru. 

{Remember you can always hold your food in 170-200' oven to keep it warm til everything is done.}

So delicious! 

{I found (and tweaked) the recipes for the chicken and rice from damndelicious.net and pinchofyum.com respectively via Pinterest :) }