Chinese sausage chicken rice using rice cooker

Chinese Sausage Chicken Rice using Rice Cooker (Philips HD3126)

Chinese Sausage Chicken Rice using Philips HD3126 Rice Cooker

This one pot dish is one of my kids’ favourites at home. The smell released from the rice cooker is so heavenly that you will definitely ask for another second or third round of serving.

There are many versions and ways of cooking this rice recipe and the most common method is using a claypot. However, busy mums like us would prefer anything that is fast and easy. Thus I would highly recommend using a rice cooker so you don’t need to watch a claypot over fire. I have another example of using rice cooker but to cook Chinese Lotus Pork Rib soup.

Any rice cooker can be used to cook this one pot meal. Even this single-function Philips HD3126 would do the trick. (Detailed reviews at the end) 

You can purchase it from store at Lazada. It is having a promotion and it is the cheapest as compared to other sites like Qoo10.

Serves: 6 Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 45 mins using Rice Cooker

INGREDIENTS

• 400-500g of boneless chicken breast (cut into chunks) (marinate with 1 tablespoon each of oyster sauce, light and dark soya sauce, optional of 2 inches of grated ginger)
• 2 Chinese sausages (cut into slices)
• 4 dried shiitake mushrooms (soak in hot water and keep the water then thinly sliced)
• 6 slices of ginger
• 4 garlic cloves (minced)
• 1 teaspoons of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• Dashes of white pepper
• 4 tablespoons of cooking oil
• 2 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 1.5 to 2 cups of rice (washed and drained off water)

PREPARATION

• Marinate chicken with 1 tablespoon each of oyster sauce, light soya sauce and dark soya sauce. Grate 2 inches of ginger (optional) onto the chicken and mix them. Put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes
• Soak dried mushrooms in hot water till soft. Then slice them thinly after removing their stems. Keep the soaked water
• Wash and drain 2 cups of rice in the rice pot and pour in the mushroom soaked water
• Prepare the rest of the ingredients 

INSTRUCTIONS

• Heat up a pan and pour in cooking oil
• Sauté garlic and ginger till you smell their fragrance
• Add in the mushrooms and Chinese sausages for a few minutes
• Add in the marinated chicken and stir fry till they turn slightly pinkish
• Add in sugar, salt and dashes of pepper and stir fry a few more minutes
• Pour the pan of food onto the rice pot with rice. Do not need to mix them
• Put in enough drinking water till it reaches level 3 or cup 3
• Cook it using normal rice cooking function (takes between 30 mins to 45 mins depending on your rice cooker)
• Keep warm for 10-15 mins
• Open up lid and fluff and mix the rice with the ingredients 
• Enjoy your yummy one pot Chinese sausage chicken rice!

Deariebear Mommie Tips

• You can opt out the grated ginger during the chicken marination if you don’t really like small ginger in your rice. 
• If you want the rice to be more moist, you can put in more water like 1/2 small cup of water with 1/2 tablespoon each of oyster sauce, light soya sauce and dark oyster sauce

Full video on cooking Chinese Sausage Chicken Rice in Philips HD3126 Rice Cooker

Reviews of Philips HD3126 Rice Cooker

Features that I particular love:

• Size is good for a family of 4
• Rice is super fluffy and moist as compared to multi-function rice cooker
• Cook faster than normal rice cooker
• Compact size and stylish
• Only 2 buttons (Cook, Warm). Super easy to use

It is having 10% discount now. Catch it before it is gone :)

Happy one pot cooking! :)

How to use Zearn to learn maths?

I chanced upon this useful maths website, Zearn when my girl was doing her online learning. 

During the circuit breaker. I decided to let my boy to try out Zearn for his Maths out of desperation because I did not know what other activities we can do the whole day. Imagine I have to plan activities for them to do the whole day everyday..

Fortunately, It turned out to be a really useful learning website for them to learn Maths and both of them are “killing” it.

For students:

Zearn is very simple and straight forward to use. I like the fact that it uses a real person to explain the concepts and also infuse with games and badges to motivate students. It included clear progress chart for both students and teachers or parents to monitor students’ progress.

For parents or teachers:

Zearn allows you to create a class roaster of students and assign the grade level to different students.

Zearn helps you to monitor learning progress of your children or students.

It also provide clear descriptions of the different “missions” and guides for offline activities to reinforce the maths concepts.

To conclude this review: It is a useful online website to learn Maths. It provides clear instructions and simple games to motivate students. Another great news is that it is free! I’m not too sure how long it will be free but it allows free registrations due to convid. Thus, please sign up for your kids while it is still available unless you wish to pay for it :)

Batch Freezing and Storing of Baby Food

Baby Claire is eating so happily. Looking at her size, you know that she really loves her food.

Do you know when Baby Claire was approaching 6 months old, I was really anxious on what to feed her? Lots of questions was in my mind like how can I even cook nutritious home-cooked food for her when I am at work? How can I offer her a variety of food to test whether she has allergic reactions to these food?  How can I store and cook organic food for her since organic fruits and vegetables perish faster than non-organic food?

Then I came across online of the concept of batch freezing food. Before I go into the details, I guess now my readers must be wondering whether about the nutritional value of food after freezing. I visited a couple of sites and almost all recommended freezing food when it is at its freshest rather than cooking the fruits and vegetables after leaving in the fridge for days.  An example of such site is here.

What Benefits?

• Save time, Save money, Serve Baby Claire with VARIETY of nutritious food. Last week, Baby Claire succeed tested her allergy against butter, cheese and also button mushrooms.

Store for how long?

• As recommended by Wholesomebabyfood.com, it is recommended that frozen food is to be consumed within 3 months. For us, we will try to consume within a month. Partly, because our small fridge only can store that much of food :P. We will cook and batch freeze baby food every 3 weeks, during the weekends when Justin Papa is around. I can't imagine doing this alone, so much chopping, steaming, cooking and storing. However, the benefits outweighs the tiredness especially when we see Baby Claire loves eating them. :)

Once you have cooked your homemade baby food, it is important that you freeze it immediately. Below contains the different storage methods which we are currently using.

Conventional Ice-cube Tray storage

The easiest and cheapest way to do this is by using ice cube trays with a lid. I bought them from Daiso at only $2 each. There are 2 different sizes. The smaller one holds around 1 oz or 30ml while the other holds around 40 ml. Fill each individual cube with baby puree and freeze. You can then put the lid on once the food has cooled down. The next day, we will remove them from the tray and put them in freezer bags (I double sealed with another zip lock bag) and labelled them.

 

Special Food container

This food container comes in handy when you freeze chunky or chopped fruits and vegetables. There are reusable BPA plastic baby food containers/pots which are easily available in most baby shops. I bought "Baby Cubes" from Mothercare.  They come with trays and allow me to stack these trays up which save space for my fridge. 

To store bigger amount of food E.g. for a meal, we use the Avent VIA Cup. This is really convenient for my FIL who just need to reheat the food using the bottle/food warmer.

Here’s a list of essential equipment for cooking and freezing large batches of baby food, some of which you probably already own:

• Philips Avent 2-1 Steamer and Blender. This site, "My Wok Life" gave details on how to use this useful equipment. It is good for making puree and it preserves most of the nutrients as the water used to steam the food are blended together.

• Electrical Steamer with multiple trays (Normal steaming pot serves well too). We use this steamer when we want to steam chopped food. It was a gift for our housewarming from my university friends. Now it really comes in handy. :)

How long do you steam the food?

Below contain a snapshot of the Avent Philip Blender guide on the steaming period. Hope this may be useful to you too :)

Here contains some examples of her meals.

Macaroni with mushroom, pumpkin, salmon, coriander in chicken stock.	Potato with zuchinii with chesse and lightly cooked with butter.
This is her oat cereal with mango.

It is always exciting to watch Baby Claire enjoying her meal and wanting for more. :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie