Enjoy East Asian Food from the Comfort of Your Home

Stuck in lockdown, you have probably been craving some delicious East Asian restaurant food.

You also may have struggled to find halal East Asian restaurants in your area or may second guess whether the meat or other ingredients are halal.

Guess what? You can have it from the comfort of your home!

The most popular East Asian cuisines come from China, Korea, Thailand, Mongolia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan. These cuisines use unique meat-free sauces and spices to bring out the succulent flavours of their traditional dishes, separating its quality from any other cuisine.

So, lets recreate the restaurant style dish of Korean chicken with vegetable egg fried rice using my method to ensure the mix of healthy and authentic ingredients.

Ingredients: Korean chicken

• 2 chicken breasts chopped into bite sized pieces
• 1 large beaten egg
• corn flour
• ¼ tsp. calt and black pepper
• 50ml vegetable oil
• 1 tsp. garlic & ginger
• 2 tbsp of honey
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar (optional)
• 2 heaped tbsp gochujang paste
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• red chilli slices & spring onion to garnish

Ingredients: vegetable egg fried rice

• 1 cup rice
• 3 beaten eggs
• 1 tsp. salt
• 40ml sesame oil
• soy sauce
• red peppers
• mushrooms
• spring onions
• hoisin sauce (optional)

Recipe: serves 4 people

1. Beat the egg in a bowl
2. Pour out some corn flour onto a plate
3. Mix salt and black pepper in to the corn flour
4. Coat the bite sized chicken pieces in the egg
5. Coat the chicken pieces in the corn flour
6. Sauté the chicken pieces in oil, garlic and ginger in a frying pan for 8 minutes on medium heat until almost fully cooked.

Now for the magic

1. In a bowl, mix the gochujang paste, honey, sesame oil and rice vinegar thoroughly
2. Add this mixture to the chicken pieces in the frying pan
3. Cook for 5 minutes, on low-medium heat until fully cooked
4. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds on the chicken
5. Take the chicken out onto a plate and garnish with spring onion and red chili slices

Vegetable egg fried rice

1. Boil the rice in a pan with salt until it’s cooked then decant the water
2. In a large wok, heat the sesame oil and shallow fry tiny squares of peppers, mushrooms and spring onions
3. Transfer the rice into the frying pan
4. Make a well in the wok and pour in the beaten eggs
5. Swirl the egg in a backwards and forwards motion until fully cooked
6. Gently fold the egg into the rice then drizzle soy sauce on top and hoisin sauce (as you like)
7. Transfer the vegetable egg fried rice into a serving dish and enjoy!

The magic ingredient

The magic authentic Korean ingredient in this recipe was the red gochujang paste giving the chicken its sweet, savoury and spicy flavour.

However, using too much gochujang will make the dish too spicy. Therefore, I recommend only 2 heaped tablespoons of it.

Gochujang paste consist of peppers, a complex mix of chilli powder, fermented soybean and glutinous rice giving its unique flavour and since it is all meat-free, it is totally halal!

Gochujang can be purchased from Waitrose, Asda, any East Asian supermarket, as well as Amazon.

Enjoy your restaurant-style Korean dish!