In rotation: 4 chicken dishes to cook, tweak and remix

A new ongoing series of meals you can make in no time

Welcome to In Rotation, a new franchise I am launching on Scraps that is partly a way for me to answer a thing I am asking myself all the time: what can I cook tonight that’s, you know, interesting?

On the really busy nights, I will throw a meal together: a tomato sauce with pasta, or a stir fry. Sometimes, though, I find a real comfort in making something, not an improvised meal with whatever is lying around but something that requires an element of discipline or thought.

I’m going to post these in-between regular Scraps posts and hope they form a bit of a guide for people who know they want something really nice and special, but also maybe only want to pick up a few ingredients. I didn’t plan on theming them, but the first four I knew I wanted to include all had chicken in them, so what can you do?

ICYMI: the latest Scraps includes sausage larb and a good way of using leftover donuts

Oven roasted shawarma

An all-timer. Roast a load of chicken thighs in spices, serve with grilled flatbreads and tons of sliced things – red onion, diced tomato, cucumber, mountains of fresh herbs. Make a garlic and herb yogurt (maybe the yogurt has lime juice in, or a drizzle of hot sauce). The New York Times’ Cooking is my go-to, but if you don’t have a subscription, there are loads of recipes online for spice rubs. You could even just buy a jar in the shop. Bon Appetit’s recipe looks good, too – it includes shallots and lemons at the oven roasting stage. It’s such a simple blueprint – impossible to fuck up.

Turmeric black pepper chicken

Another NYT recipe, but a banger that I come back to almost every week. A loose sauce is made by mixing 1/4 cup water, three tablespoons of honey, a few cranks of black pepper and some salt. Meanwhile, cubed chicken thighs are tossed in a mixture of flour and tumeric, before being fried up in a pan until they go crispy. Green beans or sliced cabbage can be added in before the honey mixture is poured in, and the sticky sugars from the honey caramalise and makes a delicious sauce. This would be amazing with pork, too – maybe with some chilli flakes in the flour for extra heat, or green peppercorns for a more vegetal spice.

What I’ve found, making this as often as I have, is that the more you introduce to the pan (cabbage, green beans) the more friction you have, which is kind of bad. Tossed in this loose flour mixture, this chicken does get crispy, but it’s not a crispy chicken dish; the best way to get the best possible texture is to let it brown, and flip it, and then maybe flip it a third time near the end. Greens can be sauteed or even steamed in a separate pan, and for flavour a trickle of sesame oil and some crushed raw garlic will season it.

Meera Sodha’s chicken curry

I don’t know if this screams ‘tossed together after the commute from hell’ but an undisputed classic nonetheless. This curry makes me feel so comforted, and you can chuck extra things in – cubed potato is a nice option. The leftovers are unreal, too, sometimes I’d make extra and stuff it into a wrap the next day.

Kung pao chicken

Okay smallest, tiniest disclaimer: you need some Chinese black vinegar for this. I know, I know, but just go and find some. You can get it on Sous Chef, Amazon, tons of Asian grocery shops (I got ours from Bang Bang food hall in North London). It is so good as a condiment; drizzled on smashed cucumbers finished with a pinch of salt. It’s probably amazing with flaked white cod and some oven chips (maybe sprinkle some togarashi or a similar spice blend on the chips when they’re hot out the oven).

Anyway I always order this dish from the takeaway and when I found a recipe that I could make at home, I was sold. Mix 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, a teaspoon of flour, salt and pepper in a bowl, then add diced chicken thighs (the smaller the better; I like tiny little cubes). Heat some oil in a pan on a medium-high heat and add some dried red chillis. Stir until they start to colour and smell fragrant. Add the chicken in and, like the recipe above, leave it to crisp up and cook, undisturbed.

Next make your sauce; 1.5 tablespoons of black vinegar, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and one teaspoon of flour. Mix well.

Once the chicken is cooked, crisped and generally smelling amazing, pour the sauce into the pan and let it thicken – it will only take about two minutes. Serve with rice, noodles, and some steamed veg.

That’s it from me – see you in a couple of weeks.