Cambodian Chicken in Whole 30/post w30 eating

Omg, you guys. I’m in umami heaven right now. This isn’t actually the recipe I mentioned that I was thinking about making (that one required more effort and I wasn’t feeling that much time over a hot stove since. The ingredients will keep, so I’ll try it out later) but this is delicious, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all.

It’s not much to look at it, but it’s freaking tasty:

As you can see, I also whipped out my new spiral slicer thingy and made some zoodles. It was really easy to use! For the zoodles, I did a quick saute with onions, garlic, coconut aminos, and fish sauce. I also added salt, but it definitely didn’t need it. My bad.

The recipe is from The Paleo Slow Cooker: Healthy, Gluten-Free Meals the Easy Way. I really like this cookbook. I was lucky enough to pick up a kindle version earlier this year for 1.99. Can’t beat that!

Cambodian Chicken

• 1 Tbsp coconut oil
• 3 lbs bone-in skinless chicken thighs
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tbsp lime juice
• 1/2 cup broth (calls for chicken; I use veggie because it’s the only W30 compliant one I can find at my grocery store)
• 1/4 cup coconut aminos

Melt the coconut oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Brown the chicken on all sides in batches, about 5 minutes a batch, and transfer to the slow cooker.

Add all the other ingredients to the slow cooker, stir to combine, and cook on low for 6 hours.

My tweaks:

Well, I say tweaks, but mostly this was just laziness. I didn’t brown the chicken, I just threw it in the crockpot. I also used garlic from a jar because I recently decided that chopping garlic is something I’m just not willing to do (though had I realized it said crushed instead of minced, I might have used fresh garlic. But I didn’t see that until I typed it. Oops.). I also used powdered ginger because I forgot to buy fresh. I probably could’ve used more.

This one wasn’t laziness, though. I eyeballed the broth. I often find that crockpot recipes have too much liquid in them, and since I knew I planned on shredding the chicken rather than eating a whole thigh, I didn’t want there to be too much liquid. So I let it cook for an hour or so, then added enough broth to just cover the thighs that weren’t covered by the liquid that cooked out of the chicken.

A note on fish sauce: It’s really hard to find fish sauce that isn’t loaded with a bunch of extra crap (like sugar) on the grocery store shelf. Red Boat is the brand that gets mentioned most often in W30 circles, and I made a special trip out to Kalustyan’s yesterday to pick some up. (I also wanted to grab some Hawaiian red sea salt to make some Kahlua pork. I’m super excited for that recipe! Yum).

Last updated July 19, 2015