Thai-Style Ground Chicken with Basil and Rice
See it adapt to allergies, servings & swaps.
Per serving 655 kcal · 32g protein · 70g carbs · 27g fat
Ingredients
- 300 g ground chicken
- 150 g jasmine rice, dry
- 300 ml water, for the rice
- 20 g fresh basil leaves
- 2 count Thai bird's eye chiles
- 3 count garlic cloves
- 1 count shallot
- 30 ml fish sauce
- 30 ml lime juice
- 10 ml white sugar
- 30 ml vegetable oil
- 120 ml chicken broth
Steps
- Rinse 150 g jasmine rice until the water runs mostly clear. Combine it with 300 ml water in a small pot, bring to a boil, then cover and drop the heat to low for 15 minutes. Pull it off the heat and leave the lid on while you cook the chicken.
- Mince 3 garlic cloves and 1 shallot. Slice 2 Thai bird's eye chiles in half lengthwise, scraping out the seeds if you want less heat. Pick 20 g basil leaves off their stems.
- Heat 30 ml vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high until it shimmers. Add the garlic and shallot and stir constantly for 30 seconds, until fragrant but not browned.
- Add 300 g ground chicken and break it apart with a spoon as it cooks. Cook 5–6 minutes, stirring, until no pink is left and the edges start to catch color.
- Stir in the chiles, 30 ml fish sauce, 10 ml white sugar, and 120 ml chicken broth. Simmer 3–4 minutes, until the sauce tightens around the chicken and stops looking watery.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir in 30 ml lime juice. Tear the basil leaves and fold them in — the pan's heat should wilt them, not cook them.
- Fluff the rice and divide it between two plates. Spoon the chicken and its sauce over the top, and lay a whole basil leaf on each if you saved one.
That is the whole thing.
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This is pad krapow's weeknight version: ground chicken into hot oil with garlic, shallot, and chile, a splash of fish sauce and broth to make the sauce, then lime and a fistful of torn basil off the heat. The rice cooks in the same half hour, so the whole dinner is one pot and one skillet.
Thai basil is what the dish is built on and it is worth buying when you can find it — it carries an anise edge sweet basil doesn't have. Regular basil is what was in the fridge here, and it works. The flavor is coming from the fish sauce, lime, and sugar. The leaf is there for perfume.
On the plate
Rice on one side, chicken over the top, sauce running down into it. The rice is doing real work here — it is what the fish sauce and lime have to land on, and a plate of this without it is just salty ground meat.
Two chiles halved with the seeds left in make this hot. Scrape the seeds out for a version that still tastes like chile and won't stop the conversation. The lime goes in off the heat on purpose — simmered, it turns bitter and flat.
Leftovers
- Store the chicken and the rice in separate airtight containers in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat the chicken in a skillet over medium with a splash of water or broth so the sauce loosens back up.
- Reheat the rice with a spoonful of water, covered, until it steams. Recombine on the plate, not in the pan.
- Tear in a few fresh basil leaves at the end. The basil from yesterday is done.
Cooking for one or two is where the waste happens — a recipe written for four leaves you with half a bunch of basil and no plan for it. Eatsë scales each recipe to the number of people actually eating, then builds the grocery list by aisle from what that comes to, and suggests the week's meals so the fridge stare has an answer. You still choose, and you still cook.
More from the recipe library — the Sichuan shrimp and snow pea stir-fry is the same shape of dinner on a different night.
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