Chicken Rice Box

Filipino chicken adobo over rice, packed cold with an ice pack and no thermos to preheat. Tamari does the work soy sauce cannot, and day two is better.

Makes

4 lunches

Hands on

20 min

Start to finish

60 min

Keeps

4 days in the fridge

• 8boneless, skinless chicken thighsThighs. This is a braise and breast has nothing to give it.
• 1/2 cupcane vinegar or plain white vinegarNot malt vinegar. Malt vinegar is made from barley.
• 1/3 cupgluten free tamariThe swap that makes this dish work at all. Ordinary soy sauce is brewed with close to as much wheat as soybean, and not every bottle sold as tamari is wheat free, so the bottle has to say gluten free.
• 1whole head of garlic, cloves peeled and smashedThe whole head. Adobo takes more garlic than looks reasonable in the pot.
• 4bay leaves
• 1 teaspoonwhole black peppercorns, crackedCracked, not ground. Ground pepper clouds the sauce.
• 1 tablespoonbrown sugarOptional. Takes the edge off for a child who finds vinegar sharp.
• 1 cupwater
• 2 cupslong grain white riceJasmine is good here. Cooked, then cooled all the way.
• 1 tablespoonneutral oil

1. Put the chicken, vinegar, tamari, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns and water in a pot. Leave the heat off and let it sit 20 minutes if the morning allows it.
2. Bring it to a boil uncovered and let it boil hard for 2 minutes without stirring. That boil cooks off the raw bite of the vinegar. Stirring at this stage is what makes adobo taste sour instead of deep.
3. Drop to a simmer, cover, and cook 25 minutes, turning the thighs once at the halfway point.
4. Start the rice now so it has time to cool. Spread it on a plate or sheet pan when it is done.
5. Lift the chicken out onto a board. Boil the sauce hard for 5 to 8 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon, then stir in the sugar if you are using it.
6. Heat the oil in a skillet and brown the thighs on both sides for a minute or two. Skipping this leaves you with boiled chicken that tastes right and looks wrong.
7. Slice or shred the chicken, toss it with a little of the sauce, and keep the rest of the sauce in a jar. Meat left sitting in the full pot of sauce keeps drinking it up all week.

1. There is no thermos here. It goes in a regular box with an ice pack, like a sandwich would, and it eats fine cold or at room temperature. Nothing to preheat at 7am and nothing hot for a child to open.
2. Sauce over the meat, not over the rice. Rice sitting in adobo sauce for four hours turns to porridge. One tablespoon on the chicken is enough and the rest of the rice stays loose.
3. Cut the chicken up at home. A whole thigh against a plastic school fork in a twenty minute lunch period is a fight your child will lose.
4. Build the boxes the night before, straight from the fridge. Everything is already cold, so there is nothing to wait on in the morning.
5. Send something cold and crisp alongside: cucumber spears, cherry tomatoes in their own cup, orange segments. The dish is salty and rich and it wants that.

• The rice comes back as one solid block. It was packed warm and steamed itself under the lid.
• It tastes harshly sour. The pot got stirred during the first boil, or it never got that hard uncovered boil at all.
• The sauce is thin and runs into the rice. It was not reduced after the chicken came out.
• By day three it is too salty to eat. The chicken was stored sitting in the full amount of sauce.

One bottle to read. Regular soy sauce is brewed with wheat, often close to as much wheat as soybean, so it is out. Tamari is the traditional wheat free version, but the word tamari on the front is not a guarantee on its own and some bottles do include wheat. Look for a gluten free statement on the label. San-J tamari is certified gluten free and widely stocked, and most large grocery chains carry a gluten free tamari in the Asian aisle or with the vinegars. Coconut aminos work if tamari is hard to find, though the dish comes out sweeter and you may want to skip the sugar. The vinegar deserves one glance as well: cane, white distilled and rice vinegar are fine, and malt vinegar is not, because it is made from barley. Bay leaves, peppercorns and garlic need no checking.