Curried Mango Chicken

Whenever I get a new cookbook, I tend to tab the recipes I want to make with sticky notes. I have had Jaden Hair’s The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook for about two years, have made at least 10 recipes from it…and still somehow have 17 sticky notes popping out of the book in every direction. Today I thought I would make some headway with trying other recipes in the book, and chose to make what Jaden calls “Pan Fried Mango Chicken” (which I think is more aptly named Curried Mango Chicken).

This is one of my favorite cookbooks because there is a lot of variety, but at the same time it all makes sense together in the same cookbook. I have yet to be disappointed with the results of a recipe from here, which is great because it gives me more confidence to try out the more “exotic” recipes in the book.

As usual, I made several alterations to the recipe.
1) The original recipe called for the parts of a whole chicken, with the skin on. I am just one person, living by myself, so there is really no reason for me to cook a whole chicken. And I didn’t want to deal with bones, so I went for the skinless version.
2) I left the spices in the same quantities. I wanted to note this, because I used ¼ the amount of chicken but I thought the spice to chicken ratio was perfect. If you wanted to add more chicken, I would also increase the spices so everything has a lot of flavor.
3) My mango was funky. It was all perfect and beautiful on the outside, and then I cut into it only to find gross brownish-purple spots EVERYWHERE!! URGH!! Anyhow, due to chopping around the spots with ninja-like precision in order to keep as much mango as possible, I have no idea how much mango I actually used in the recipe. I am guessing it was about one third of the mango… maybe one half…

Also, I would also like to mention that while I am usually excited and ready to make substitutions to all components in a recipe, I would not change the protein to anything else besides chicken, and I would also not change the fruit to anything besides the mango. I think the flavors and preparation of this recipe are fairly unique to the chicken-mango combination. That said, if you are successful in adaption the recipe, say to a vegetarian version, let me know!

Today’s song: “Today” by GD and Kim JongWan

Onward to the recipe!

Alright, first the chicken is rubbed down with the major flavor of the dish: the curry. Don’t be deceived by various brands all calling a curry spice mix simply “curry.” They actually have varying ingredients, and it is worth checking out the labels to see which one you and/or your recipe would prefer. I picked this one because it was not only organic, it had more spices than the other curry powders in the store with spices such as ginger (which I adore) included.

 

Then the chicken gets pan-fried in some butter and garlic until it is cooked through.

 

 

Meanwhile, chop the mango and mint.

 

 

Finally everything gets added together.

 

This is extra delicious served with rice, which soaks up all the curry goodness wonderfully!

 

Curried Mango Chicken

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon canola oil
2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 teaspoon curry powder
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
4 cloves of garlic, halved
1 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon brown rice vinegar
½ of a mango, cubed
2 tablespoons fresh mint, minced

Directions:

• Put the chicken, oil, curry, salt and pepper in a small bowl and mix to coat.
• Put the butter in a small skillet and sauté over high heat. When the butter is melted and bubbling, add the chicken and fry until the skin becomes golden brown.
• Add the garlic to the pan, turn the heat to medium-low and cover. Cook for about 8 minutes before flipping the chicken and cooking for another 10-15 minutes, or until cooked through.
• Remove the chicken from the pan, and tent loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm. Scoop out about 1 tablespoon of fat from the pan, turn the heat on high and pour the vinegar and stock into the pan.
• Add the mango and the mint to the pan and cook for a few minutes until the sauce thickens and the mango softens.
• Add the chicken back to the pan to coat in the sauce. Turn off the heat and serve over rice.

My Thoughts:

• The chicken was super moist and flavorful! Absolutely delicious!
• This is completely random, but I wouldn’t serve this on a light colored plate. The curry was so vivid and saucy, and it seemed to instantly spread all over my pure white plate. Not a problem, but I wouldn’t have noticed if the plate had been darker.
• I am not sure if it was because my mango was lame, but it didn’t seem to add much to the recipe. The chicken would have been delicious with or without the mango. That said, it was still good, and it didn’t add anything negative to the dish.

Rating: 4.5/5
The chicken was absolutely delicious, but besides mango being delicious in its own right, it didn’t really add much to the recipe.