Tropical Chinese Chicken Traybake

 

Chinese Chicken traybake with a Mango Chutney flavoured sauce, is a subtle taste of the tropics which works, and won't break the budget. This one is a simple Asian style traybake meal you can cook at home. Traybakes are such an easy weekend dinner and will make your life easy during the week as well. My family has always loved this dish.

This chicken dish will really tantalise your tastebuds, and the family will be hungry and hovering, just waiting for it to be served. The aroma of it cooking throughout the house is amazing. The ingredients are simple, but if the balance is wrong it just doesn't taste right. This Chinese Chicken Sauce works well with baked chicken wings, chicken legs, chicken thigh cutlets or breasts, or a whole baked chicken. When all our family lived at home, before the two children went away to university, I used to bake this recipe using a whole chicken. It was demolished in one sitting by the four of us. These days, I use chicken thighs, skin on and bone in, when I cook this for Mr. HRK and me. It's finger lickin' good.

I generally bake the meat as per usual until half cooked, pour off most of the fat and then cover with the sauce and cook until the meat is fully cooked and the sauce has glazed.  It is important to watch it towards the end of the cooking time so that the sauce doesn't burn. 

Ingredients:

Serves 4

8 chicken thigh cutlets
4 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 tablespoon white wine or Chinese wine
1 tablespoon Rice wine vinegar
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder, or crushed fresh garlic to taste (I like a few cloves)
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder or 1 sliced large red chilli (optional)
2 tablespoons low salt soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon mango chutney (I use my home made batch, the Tropical influence) (also optional)

Method:

Preheat your oven to a moderate heat.

Combine all of the sauce ingredients into a jug for the marinade, cover and set aside.
Place the chicken pieces in a baking dish, skin side up and pour enough water into the dish to cover the base.



Bake the chicken thigh cutlets for about 20 minutes or lightly browned. A lot of the fat should have been cooked out of the chicken and be in the base of the pan, and the water evaporated. The chicken skin will be lightly coloured, and the chicken should only be half cooked.

Pour most (3/4) of the fat out of the dish.

Pour the chicken marinade over the chicken covering each piece well and place back in the oven for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove the baking dish from the oven and baste the chicken with the sauce in the pan. The sauce will have thickened and will coat the chicken nicely.

This isn't really burnt, looks darker in the photo and was delicious

Place back in the oven, and if your oven is a hot oven reduce the temperature to 160-170 degrees, and be careful that the chicken doesn't burn, although the crispy bits in the dish and on the chicken are delicious.

For those friends of mine reading this who have an air fryer, I think the chicken could be partly cooked in the air fryer to save time. If you do try cooking this in the air fryer, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you anyway if you bake it using the traditional traybake method. Please tell me how it goes.

Serve with boiled rice and Asian stir fried vegetables or even a fresh Wombok salad. I can't wait to eat this again soon.

Warm wishes,

Pauline