The Best Goddamned Thing You’ll Ever Cook: Lemon Honey Ginger Chicken

Though you people know me as a lifter-historian, the two things at which I am best are cat whispering (my cats are better behaved off leash than your dogs) and cooking, the latter of which I am so good at that even if I were a obese giant with a micropenis and no oral skills, I could still take whomever I want home and fuck them just on the promise of breakfast in the morning. Luckily for you guys I have so little patience for other people at this point I have plenty of free time to experiment with food and then write about it, because it’s a damn sight better than putting up with whatever trivial nonsense people seem to need to converse about as a lead up to fucking. As such, I thought that everyone of every sexual persuasion might want to ditch The Game and messages that consist of nothing but “Hi” in lieu of learning to cook this one recipe, which I assure you will at the very least get you a handy under the table as they eat, if not some top once they finish licking the bowl clean.

As I cannot afford to go down another research rabbit hole, I am just going to give you the recipe so I can get back to the finale of Adah Menken and Lola Montez, the two chicks who basically invented the concept of an action star, both of whom could merc you in an instant were they alive today (and that is not hyperbole). This recipe originally comes from the website Life Made Sweeter, and that one has every kind of modification you could want to make to this recipe, from using an air fryer to making it “paleo.” For mine I adapted the recipe to being somewhat blazed and never having really made a sweet sauce of any kind before, I managed to blow it out of the water just by winging it while listening to Taste of the Past (which if you’re any kind of history or culinary nerd you would probably enjoy- it’s from the female cohost of Milk Street Radio, if that helps).

Nutrition on this bad boy is going to come down to what you put into this, but I made the shit to taste like it was served to me at PF Chang’s, not to fit macros or a diet. If you are worried about your waistline, make this your one big meal of the day and live on shakes for the rest of it if you want (it’s what I often do). That, incidentally, is about the easiest way to eat like an asshole and stay lean enough to be the best built person at the pool- if you think you’re gonna be eating like shit at some point, make most of the rest of your meals 50g of protein and little else. Just protein in water, or an RTD, or whatever you’ve gotta do to make it low cal and super high protein.

That way, when you’re drunkenly staring down a Chinese buffet at 1130AM, you know you’ve got a lot of caloric room to spare, especially given the thermic activity of the 300 grams of pure protein you’ve already consumed. Plus, keeping your diet isocaloric is about the easiest way to keep from getting fat while keeping your performance optimal and living a normal goddamned lifestyle (because at some point, everyone in your life will be sick of watch you eat wings at every meal), and if you’ve got 300g of protein you know you can fucking gorge yourself and so long as you’re eating meat-based dishes, there’s almost no chance you’ll fat or carbohydrate to throw yourself significantly out of balance. And even if you do, you can always drink a few shakes and eat really lean the next day, which is far more sensible than starving yourself or whatever people’s normal impulse in that situation would be (from my vantage point that’s usually when normal people throw in the towel altogether and just eat like a fatass again).

Ingredients

• 1 egg white lightly beaten
• 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast cut into small chunks (stop short of mincing, because it’s popcorn chicken, essentially)
• 1/2 cup cornstarch 
• 1/3 cup panko crumbs 
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• Vegetable oil for pan frying

For the Sauce:

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 TBSP rice wine vinegar (get the rice wine vinegar- it’s got a much better flavor than what you typically use)
• 4 TBSP lemon juice
• 1.5 tsp sesame oil (I love the flavor of sesame oil and was going high calorie that day anyway- you can use 1 tsp, but I wouldn’t sub another kind of oil)
• couple of heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic (to your taste though- I eat garlic like my parents are Korean-Italian rather than looking like we’re in the same genetic line as Caliban from the X-Men)
• 1-2 tsp freshly grated ginger
• 2 TBSP cornstarch 
• 2-3 TBSP water (plus more to thin out the sauce, because corn starch is tricky as a thickener)
• Sriracha, chili oil, or gochujang

Garnish (optional):

• Green onions and sesame seeds

Instructions

1. Combine the sauce ingredients together in a medium saucepan and stir on low. I like to let the stuff cook together as long as possible to ensure the flavors all blend nicely, so I basically just let this simmer while I did the rest. If you don’t want to do that, you can just leave it unheated until step 5.
2. Measure out 3 tablespoons and add to a large mixing bowl then put the sauce back on low heat. Crack the egg into the mixing bowl, adding only the white and chucking the yolk, then lightly beat in the egg white and toss the chicken pieces in the mix of egg and sauce.
3. In a large zip-top freezer bag, combine the cornstarch, panko crumbs, salt, and black pepper. Add the chicken and shake the shit out of it until everything is coated. Obviously, you can toss them in bowl as well, but a gallon freezer back makes it super easy.
4. Pan fry your chicken pieces in a few TBSP of oil. To do this, add 1-2 inches of vegetable oil to a medium pan and heat on the medium setting.  Working in batches, place the chicken pieces in the hot oil, frying for 3-4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. When done, use tongs to remove them from the oil and place them on the paper towel lined plate.
5. While the chicken is cooking, heat saucepan with sauce on medium high. Allow to bubble and thicken while whisking and turn off the heat. Taste and adjust seasonings to what you prefer – typically people add lemon, honey, or something spicy like chili oil.
6. Toss with sauce, and if you want to add veggies, you can refire the chicken with the veggies in the same pan, after dumping most of the remaining oil, then toss in the sauce, or just toss the chicken in it and eat it like that.

If it seems like a pain in the ass, it really isn’t, especially if you’re trying to cook your way into sex (which fucking works, by the way). I’ve researched sticky rice, and that’s more of a pain in the ass than I am willing to endure for sex, but you might have a higher bar for irritation than a 14 hour process that nets very little in appreciable results. You can do it in a rice cooker, but I have enough dumbass appliances in my kitchen, and my space is already far too limited to make that expenditure. Depending on how close you are to closing, you may need to make that investment of time and money… although if you’re just gonna get fat and rub one out, just get the sticky rice from a Chinese takeout place and save yourself the time.

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