Poached coconut chicken is fast becoming a staple on our dinner menu. We eat a lot of chicken in our house and finding news ways to enjoy it is always something that I am looking out for. Only recently I have started getting into poaching chicken. It all started with poaching some chicken in my bone brothto make a really nutritious and simple chicken soup.
Poaching is great as it doesn’t take long and the chicken comes out so tender. You also avoid having to stand over a hot fry pan like you do when you are frying chicken.
Now it was time to up the poaching ante and explore other delicious ways of cooking chicken. Poaching chicken in coconut milk adds a Thai element to the dish, so naturally adding in the ginger and lemongrass brings out these flavours even more.
Once you have the art of poaching the chicken, you can pair it up with any variety of salad base. I used what I had in the fridge today which was baby spinach, capsicum, cucumber and snow peas. But really using a shredded white cabbage would suit the dish even better and add a little crunch.
Another option with this dish is to serve it with all the poached liquid and have it more as a soup. You may want to switch up the vegetables a little to make it more suitable to soups. In this case I would swap out the spinach for cabbage and most likely leave out the cucumber.
What I also like about poached coconut chicken, is that it tastes great the next day. If I have enough on hand I will add in an extra chicken breast and save this for the lunches the next day.
I hope you enjoy this dish, let me know how it goes.
- • 300 gm chicken breast free range/organic
- • 1 cup coconut milk
- • 1 teaspoon fresh giner grated
- • 1/2 stalk lemongrass finely chopped
- • 2 cups baby spinach finely sliced
- • 1/2 red capsicum sliced into thin strips
- • handful snowpeas sliced into thin strips
- • 1 tablespoon shredded coconut
- • 1 Lebanese cucumber sliced into thin strips
- Combine the chicken, ginger, lemon grass and coconut milk in a medium size saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer.
- Reduce heat to low and cook, turning occasionally, for 10 minutes or until chicken is just cooked through
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the chicken sit in the pan with the lid on whilst you prepare the vegetables.
- Divide the sliced vegetables and place onto serving plates.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and slice it into strips.
- Place the chicken on top of the vegetables and drizzle some of the poached milk over the dish.
- Sprinkle the dish with shredded coconut.
- Enjoy.