Instant Pot Orange Chicken Over Low Carb Riced Cauliflower Veggies

Instant Pot Orange Chicken Over Low Carb Riced Cauliflower Veggies

Today's recipe is a hybrid of something I found on the internet and something I created in the kitchen to go along with it.

The chicken portion of the recipe is this.

But I had taken a screenshot of the recipe so I didn't have the link to the rice portion of the recipe.

Here's what I did to make the rice (although free free to follow the recipe in the above link too).  

I felt like chicken over riced cauliflower didn't sound like enough of a meal so I picked up some broccoli and bok choy for this.

Had my usual "Friday company" coming over for dinner so was a little nervous about trying this out on company first, but I'm glad I did.  It came out fabulously.  MMmmm...

Asian Style Riced Cauliflower with Vegetables

• One head of organic cauliflower, riced (see below)
• One head of organic broccoli, cut into large bite-size pieces (I don't know if they're called "heads of broccoli" but basically what you normally buy in the grocery store as one "bunch")
• One head of organic bok choy, cut into large pieces (or several if using baby bok choy)
• One organic onion (you can use scallions if you prefer), chopped
• Two organic carrots, diced
• 1-2 tablespoons of organic olive oil (can use coconut oil instead)
• 1 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil
• 1-inch cube of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced

This was my first time making riced cauliflower.  If you don't have a food processor, you can buy it already riced in most stores.  I cut my cauliflower in half and removed the thick stems.  Rinsed the large pieces then put two pieces at a time into my food processor and pulsed them gently a couple times, pour the riced cauliflower into a bowl and add two more pieces to the food processor.  It doesn't take much time and clean up for veggies is so much easier than something like hummus.  I was surprised how much one head of cauliflower makes.  I had bought two heads, thinking I'd use them both for Friday night dinner, but I didn't so now I can make roasted cauliflower for breakfast.  Yay!

I sometimes have to do things a little differently in my kitchen because of its size and limitations.  Because I only have one burner (when I use my large pan), I did the veggies in stages.  What I did was par-boiled (I think that's what it's called) the broccoli and bok choy until al dente.  I did the broccoli first (threw it in a pot of boiling water), pulled it out with a slotted spoon then threw in the bok choy into the same water for another few minutes then removed that with a slotted spoon.  Both semi-cooked veggies went into a "waiting" bowl together off to the side.

Then I took my large non-stick frying pan and heated the two oils (medium/high) and added the diced carrots.  After a couple minutes, I added the onions (carrots take longer to cook than onions and my goal is al dente veggies, not mush).

Then I added the garlic and ginger, mixed it all up and cooked a few more minutes, then turned the stove off and put the pan on a stone tile to wait.

At this point I started the Instant Pot chicken... which is basically cutting up the chicken, adding the liquid and powder ingredients to the pot, then the chicken, then letting them cook for 6 minutes, removing the chicken and thickening the sauce with an arrowroot slurry while on saute, then adding the chicken back in and serving.

So while the chicken was in the instant pot, I put the large frying pan back on the stove (the carrots and onions are still in it), set it to medium heat, and added the riced cauliflower.  My friend helped by stirring that a bit while I attended to finishing the chicken and sauce portion of the meal.

When the cauliflower was ready (it was maybe 6 minutes or so), we added the broccoli and bok choy to the pan, give it all a few more stirs to make sure the new additions were also warmed up and voila!

This was really, really a great dinner.  Definitely a keeper.  I may tweak the chicken recipe a bit next time. I might add some orange zest for bit more "orange flavor" and instead of the powdered spices, I may opt for fresh ones (like I did with the veggies).  Maybe add some cayenne too.

For this amount of chicken (above photo) in my bowl, I ended up adding another heaping serving spoonful of the veggies.  My favorite ratio is like four or five times the veggies to any meat.

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Have a recipe you’d like me to try out?  Let me know in comments.  So long as it’s gluten free, sugar free, yeast free, and corn free… I’ll have a look.  When leaving a comment, you may need to use the pull-down to change the selection from "Google Account" to "Name/URL" or "Anonymous"  Thanks!