Recipe: Lucky Peach’s “Miso Claypot Chicken (No Claypot)”

Because tasty doesn’t have to be labor-intensive.

Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes is a celebration of “gloriously inauthentic” but craveable dishes for home cooks. Together with the magazine’s other editors, co-founder Peter Meehan has culled their all-time favorite recipes into a cookbook for “easy eating on a real-life schedule and budget.”

This simplified “Miso Claypot Chicken (No Claypot)” recipe can be made without the claypot. Based on Japanese maze gohan, meaning “mixed rice,” this recipe is typically made in a rice cooker so that it’s as easy as adding the ingredients and pushing a button! Don’t worry if you don’t own a rice cooker—they’ve also adapted this recipe for a dutch oven. It’s a no-fuss one-pot meal!

Lucky Peach’s Miso Claypot Chicken (No Claypot)

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

4 boneless, skin-on chicken thighs, cut into 1″ pieces

8 fresh shiitake mushroom caps, thinly sliced (or 4 dried shiitakes, soaked, stemmed, and thinly sliced)

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp Shaoxing wine

1 tbsp white or red miso

½ tsp kosher salt

½ tsp sugar

½ tsp sesame oil

White pepper, to taste

1 cup jasmine rice, rinsed and drained

1 cup chicken stock or water

1 slice fresh ginger (¼” thickness)

2 scallions, cut into 1″ pieces

Prepare: In a large bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, oyster sauce, wine, miso, salt, sugar, sesame oil, and a few grinds of white pepper. Add the chicken and mushrooms and fold to coat evenly.

Next, combine the rice, stock, and ginger in a rice cooker or a small Dutch oven.

For a rice cooker: Scrape the chicken mixture and all of the marinade on top of the rice. Scatter with scallions. Cover, start the rice cooker, and cook until the cycle is done. Open the lid and check the chicken for doneness.

(Depending on your model, the chicken may need a couple more minutes to cook through. If it does, set the rice cooker for another cycle, press start, and check again in 5 minutes.)

For a Dutch oven: Place over medium heat and cook for 5 minutes, until just simmering. Reduce the heat to low and cook until all the liquid is absorbed. The chicken should be cooked through, about 25 minutes. Fluff the rice, scraping up the crust from the bottom of the pot.

Scoop out and serve by the bowlful…or eat straight out of the rice cooker!