7 Chinese Kitchen Tricks That Cut My Grocery Bill

📖 Get My Cook Book — the habits from my mother's kitchen, written down for an American grocery store (244 pages, 46 dinners): https://mrsjinkitchen.com 🥢 Subscribe for a new kitchen habit every week — ordinary groceries, better dinners. One chicken, three dinners and a soup: this is how my mother fed eight people from a single bird every week. If your roast feeds four and the carcass goes in the trash on Wednesday, nobody showed you that a chicken is a supply, not a dinner. Every measure is below. Hao ma? 🍚 THE CLOCK 30 minutes hands-on across the week, 3 hours of the pot working alone. Poach Sunday, stir-fry Tuesday, soup and rice Thursday. 🍚 THE CARD: ONE CHICKEN, THREE DINNERS AND A SOUP Feeds 4 three times, or 8 twice. 1 whole chicken, about 4 lb (1.8 kg) 12 cups (2.8 L) cold water 6 slices fresh ginger (warms the pot and the pan) 1 bunch green onions (tops for the pot, whites regrow in water) 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp rice vinegar (added last) 1 tbsp cornstarch (the coat that keeps the water in the meat) 1 head green cabbage, about 2 lb, sliced thin 3 cups long-grain rice, washed until nearly clear Salt to taste, added at the END SUNDAY. Chicken, cold water, 3 ginger slices, 3 onion tops in a large pot. Bring just to a simmer, lowest heat, lid on, 45 minutes. Off the heat, rest in the pot 20 minutes. Lift out. Pull off all the meat and chill it. Save the skin. Every bone goes back in the pot. Dinner one: slice half the meat, warm in a little broth, top with soy, a drop of sesame oil and green onion, over plain rice. Bones at the lowest simmer, barely moving, 2 hours. Strain. Salt now. Cool, lift the fat off into a small jar. TUESDAY. Cut the rest of the meat small and even, toss with cornstarch and 1 tbsp water. Fry the skin in a hot pan until the fat runs, remove it. Cabbage in the hot fat, high heat, 3 minutes. Meat in, 1 minute. Soy, sugar, vinegar, green onion last. THURSDAY. Cook the rice in 4½ cups cold broth instead of water, lid on, lowest heat 15 minutes, rest 10. Heat the rest of the broth, green onion on top. Serve together. 🍚 I WILL NOT ARGUE Skin on your plate or not. Garlic or not. Roast instead of poach; the carcass goes in the pot the same way. 🍚 THE PAN IS HONEST Gray, cloudy soup → the fire was too high. Thin soup → the bones came out too soon. Dry, tough stir-fry → crowded pan, pieces too big. Gluey rice → hot broth went in with the rice. Flat taste → salt went in with the bones. Limp green onion → it went in the pan, not on top. Fat on the cold soup → the cook's reward. 🍚 ONE QUIET THING ABOUT THE STORE A whole chicken is about $8, eight plates with rice under them, about $1 a plate. A tray of breasts is about $12, feeds four once, about $3 a plate, bones gone. Nobody is cheating you. Cutting the bird apart is work. 🍚 THE HABIT Broth keeps 4 days in the refrigerator door, 3 months in the freezer. The fat jar keeps 2 weeks. Green onion whites regrow in water on the sill; they never go in the freezer. 🍚 WHAT I WOULD ASK OF YOU Carry two things: the cleaver on the meat, and the bones in the pot. Then tell me how many plates one chicken gave you, how many foil packages honestly went in the trash, and your state. 🍚 NEXT TIME IN THIS KITCHEN Yesterday's soup rice in a hot pan with an egg. #chinesecookingrecipe #onechicken #homecooking 📖 Get My Cook Book - Make It Go Further — the habits from my mother's kitchen, written down for an American grocery store (244 pages, 46 dinners): https://mrsjinkitchen.com