Chicken and Fuzzy Melon Turmeric Stir Fry

If this recipe looks familiar, you’ve been looking at the first two recipes that I posted. I have to admit that I couldn’t throw away the remainder of the marinade used in the Malay-Style Grilled Turmeric Chicken Breast recipe, and I had some chicken and fuzzy melon left over from the Steamed Chicken with Salt Fish, Basil, and Fuzzy Melon recipe. So I combined what was left in my refrigerator and made a stir fry. As you can see, I’ll use whatever’s available to make a meal.

It usually is not a good idea to reuse a marinade, but in this case the leftover marinade was cooked thoroughly to make the sauce for the dish. Since I expect you to make this recipe from scratch, the ingredients are listed with that assumption.

The chicken needs some preparation time, so you’ll need a minimum of 2 hours for prep and marinating, but marinating overnight is preferable. The baking soda serves to make the finished cooked chicken very tender – just be sure to wash it out before marinating. This step can be omitted, but try tenderizing your chicken (or any other meat for that matter) this way and you’re likely to be a believer.

This turned out to be a tasty single-dish meal and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Malay-Style Grilled Turmeric Chicken Breasts (燒烤馬來黃薑雞胸肉, Siu1 Haau1 Maa5 Loi4 Wong4 Goeng1 Gai1 Hung1 Juk6)

This recipe was updated on 04 Nov 2015. The Chinese name was added, some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

 

Grilling chicken outside in the barbeque is one of my favorite methods to cook chicken. Adding a smoking wood to the grill, such as hickory, mesquite, pecan, or whatever your favorite wood is, further enhances the flavor of the chicken. This recipe was adapted from the Turmeric Fried (Grilled) Chicken recipe from the Best Recipes, Foods, and Travel blog, which no longer exists. This is not an authentic Malay recipe since a wet marinade is used before the chicken is grilled or smoked.

 

Enjoy!

Steamed Chicken with Salt Fish, Basil, and Fuzzy Melon

The recipe was adapted from the Steamed Chicken and Salt Fish recipe from the House of Annie blog. This version adds basil and fuzzy melon to make a one dish meal. Boneless chicken thigh pieces are used instead of the drumettes. Regardless, the chicken should be marinated at least 4 hours (overnight is preferable) before steaming.

The ingredients should be layered in a heat proof dish in the following order:

1. Fuzzy melon in one layer on the bottom of the heat proof dish
2. Basil leaves layered on top of the fuzzy melon base
3. Marinated chicken
4. Salt Fish
5. Julienned ginger

I hope you enjoy this dish!