I have 3 chicken breasts, onions, and scallions. What I want to do is put the chicken in a baking dish with the vegetables chopped into large pieces, and then slather it in soy sauce and oyster sauce and bake it at 350 until the chicken is safe to eat. In the meantime I’ll make some rice for it.
a) Will this work?
b) If not, what should I do?
c) If it will, any suggestions?
d) How much sauce should I use?
e) Should I marinate the chicken in anything first?
Add the scallions raw after cooking. You already have onions in there. Much better color, texture, and flavor that way.
But yeah, it would work.
If you want to marinate the chicken, you can do it in the soy sauce, but you may end up with a saltier dish than you’d like. You don’t have to use a lot of sauce. I’d suggest brushing the soy sauce over the chicken at the beginning of cooking and again about fifteen minutes before the chicken is done. You should wait until then to put the oyster sauce on, since a sugary sauce is likely to get gummy or even burned if it cooks as long as the chicken does. If the chicken has its skin on, it will stay more moist, but you’ll also end up with a layer of grease in the pan and most of the sauce you put on at the beginning will come off with that fat.
I see, Legend. I was thinking more along the lines of a very thin slurry of corn starch. Then again, I’m basing this idea on what my ex-girlfriend’s dad did for dinner when we went to visit her parents. He took a big fillet of salmon, put it in a casserole, poured a bottle of teriyaki sauce over it (it was ~8oz, possibly less), and then let it bake for a while. It was real damn good. So perhaps I don’t want to screw with it that much?
I want to accomplish something similar here. The breasts are skinless and “99% lean,” according to the package. I want to have the chicken and onion juices mix with the sauce I put on it to put over the rice (and to moisten the chicken if I cook it too long;)). The oyster sauce is pretty thick, so that’s I why I thought to thin it out with soy sauce, but that would start getting too salty. Perhaps if I used some rice or white wine and low-sodium chicken stock instead?
Also, I’ll try what you suggested with the scallions, Lamar. I’ve used scallions in stews before, and I’ve learned the hard way to add them near the end. I’ll do something similar this time; I want them cooked, but still a bit crisp. I’m also trying to make this similar to the beef with scallions that this chinese place makes around here. I’m pretty sure they don’t use oyster sauce, though, and theirs is clearly made on a wok. I’m just looking for something I can put in the oven for 30-60 minutes and have it turn out reasonably good.
If they’re skinless, you’ll definitely want to cook them with some liquid, and it might be a good idea to cover your pan (although at that point, technically, you’re braising, not baking). It sounds like you’ve got a pretty good idea of how to proceed - I’ll bet you could mix up a great soy/oyster/white wine/chicken stock sauce for this experiment!