Slow-poached chicken with black rice & mushrooms

Yesterday, on Instagram, one of my favourite chefs (the chef/owner of Parts and Labour) posted a picture of slow-poached chicken and rice. It's been so long since I poached chicken, that this photo TOTALLY inspired me to make poached chicken tonight. And as luck would have it, I had two fresh chicken thighs in my fridge.

The good thing about slow-poached chicken is that the chicken stays really soft and moist...and you end up with a beautiful chicken broth from the poaching liquid. The other thing is that chicken isn't a tough meat. So slow-poaching a pair of thighs only takes 40 minutes. We cook for one in this house, so the chicken recipe is for one person. You can't cook rice for one person, so that recipe is for 4 people.

Slow-poached chicken thighs

• 2 chicken thighs, bone-in and skin on
• 1 tbsp salt
• thyme salt, for finishing
• olive oil, for finishing

Put the salt in a pot and fill with enough water to cover the thighs (Just eyeball it. Don't put the chicken in the pot yet.). Bring the water to a boil, then add the chicken to the pot. Turn off the stove, but leave the pot on the hot element. Leave it to poach for 40 minutes. At the 20-minute mark, turn the chicken thighs over. But do it quickly because you don't want to lose too much heat by leaving the pot uncovered for long. If you're pedantic and need to be really specific, you can check the meat with an instant read thermometer. The chicken is done at 160F/70C.

When you're ready to serve, carefully pull the skin off (cuz chicken skin crackling it will become), then pull the meat off the bone. It should be really juicy and tender. You can pour a few drops of the poaching liquid over it to keep it moist if you need to. I finished it with a bit of thyme salt and a few drops of olive oil.

Black rice with mushrooms

Since I'm Chinese, I obviously have rice cooker. If you don't have a rice cooker, then just cook the rice the way you normally would.

• 1 cup black rice
• 5 button mushrooms, coarsely chopped
• 1 tsp canola oil
• ½ tsp dark soy sauce
• ½ cup of cilantro, finely chopped
• 1 green onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• ½-inch ginger, minced
• 1 red chili, finely chopped (optional)
• 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (don't use that crap that comes in the plastic lemon)

Cook the rice in a rice cooker or a pot. When the rice is ready, start cooking the mushrooms.

Heat the canola oil in a pan. Make sure the oil is nice and hot before you put the mushrooms in, and don't crowd the pan with the mushrooms, or it'll just be a sad, sorry, muddy mess.

When the mushrooms are ready, remove the pan from the heat and toss the mushrooms with the soy sauce. Add the mushrooms and all the minced/finely chopped ingredients to the rice cooker and mix well. Squeeze in the lemon juice, close the rice cooker and press the "cook" button again. Have a quick taste. If you need to add salt, do it now. If you're not using a rice cooker, just add everything to the pot of warm rice, stir it up and cover so that it can steam for ~10 minutes.

Add a scoop of rice to your plate of chicken and eat.