Lemon Chicken

Chinese restaurants give me the willies. I get sick just smelling the food. I have learned to stay away. Their low quality ingredients combined with the fact that their oil is used and reused over and over again until even their highly flavored, MSG laden sauces can no longer cover up the rancid flavor.

Did you know that grocery stores used to sell straight MSG? Now that the majority of the public knows that it is harmful it is hidden in common products and companies hope people don’t read labels and if they do at least they are not able to understand what they read.

The whole concept of chicken and vegetables with (brown) rice is a good one though, so we recreate.

1/2 cup corn starch
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, whisk with 1 teaspoon water
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 chicken breasts, cubed
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon stone ground mustard
juice and zest of 1 lemon
½ cup pineapple juice
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
¼ teaspoon pepper

Combine cornstarch, cayenne and salt. Heat oil to medium-high. Coat chicken with cornstarch/spice mixture, then egg. place in oil and brown on each side. Combine vinegar, lemon juice and zest, pineapple juice*, honey, soy sauce and pepper. Pour mixture over chicken. Partially cover and let simmer on low for 10 minutes, until liquid thickens into a sauce. Serve over rice and don’t forget the steamed veggies. I keep mine on the side because I don not like them all saucy, but if you want to stir fry them and add them to chicken at the end, just up the sauce mixture by 50 percent.

*Since we don’t use a lot of pineapple juice, but I like to keep it on hand for sauces and dressings, I buy it in the frozen concentrate form and just scoop out a tablespoon at a time and add ½ cup water.