“What’s for dinner? Braised Chicken with Ginger ah? Why all meals must have chicken and ginger one? Kenot eat something else, meh?” Does any of that sound all too familiar? Perhaps you’ve had Braised Chicken with Ginger for one too many meals. 

Let’s face it; chicken transcends all. Whether you are Chinese, Indian, Malay, Japanese, Korean, British, or Italian, (continue listing nationalities on your own here), the chicken will have a special place in all our hearts. It’s used in tonics like the iconic Brand’s Essence of Chicken or comfort food the ever-popular Korean Fried Chicken.

Today, we will be looking at a classic dish that is commonly served in many households and eateries in Singapore. The ingredients used are absolutely simple – Boneless chicken thigh, ginger paste, coriander leaf (also known as cilantro), sesame oil, and the special life-giving elixir…water. 

Of course, we here at ReLacto believe in letting the natural taste of the ingredients speak for themselves, so if you want to add in your own ingredients and seasoning, feel free to do so. You might want to add in salt or soy sauce or even oyster sauce. If you are so inclined, feel free to do so according to your taste buds.

Back to our version of things, although the ingredients are simple, this hearty dish is simply packed with flavours that make for an absolutely lovely and satisfying meal. You can make it even more satisfying with a happy bowl of freshly cooked rice. We recommend pairing it with our Hainanese Chicken Rice for a fully cheeky chicky dinner!

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take some time here to answer some questions we normally get regarding this dish and breastfeeding. Particularly if you are wondering whether it is good for you and suitable for breastfeeding mummies. It is a fair question to ask considering that there are many do’s and don’ts that mamas have to take note of when it comes to breastfeeding considering that her breast milk can be influenced by her diet.

Without going into too much detail regarding the nutritional sciences behind this dish and how it affects you, we’ll say – Yes, it is safe for consumption, and it even offers benefits for breastfeeding mothers too.

However, we’ve seen certain iterations of this dish where alcohol is used as an ingredient due to Traditional Chinese Medicine recommendations for warm foods ingredients. For your baby’s well-being, if you are consuming braised chicken that is prepared with alcohol – or any dish with alcohol actually –  we highly recommend boiling this dish for more than half an hour after adding such an ingredient. This reduces the content of alcohol in the dish. To further reduce exposure of to alcohol your baby may leak into the breast milk, and you can also plan ahead and only breastfeed after 3 hours from your intake of such foods. 

Braised Chicken With Ginger & Coriander Sauce

Now that we’ve gotten the formalities out of the way let’s take a look at how to prepare your own version of our Braised Chicken with Ginger & Coriander Sauce.

First off, decide if you want to use your coriander sauce as a dabbing thing or a drizzling thing. What we mean by this is to think if you want to dip your chicken into it or pour the sauce over the entire dish. If you’re wondering if it makes any difference to the recipe, no, not really. Some people just prefer to have the sauce to dip rather than coating the dish. Kinda like how restaurants provide dipping sauces instead of just incorporating them into the cooking process. Also, the significance of these two choices affects how much of the sauce you’ll need to prepare, that’s all.

Let’s start off with the most time-consuming portion, the braised chicken with ginger.

Start by heating up a wok or a deep pan. While waiting for that to heat up, chop up your ginger. We recommend thinly slicing it for this one. For added convenience, you could substitute it for ginger paste, and that’ll work too.

Our proportions for this recipe are as follows: ~35g of ginger paste for ~500g of meat.

Plop in the ginger paste with about a small teaspoon of sesame oil and fry that for a bit until you can smell the fragrance of the ginger to get stronger. If it gets pungent, you’ve fried it too long.

Once you are satisfied with how fragrant the kitchen now smells, plop in the chicken and let it cook for a bit until the meat becomes slightly opaque and the skin starts to brown lightly. 

At this point, you’ll want to pour in some water. The amount of water here depends on the pot you’re using to cook this, but we recommend about a cup or two until the water covers the chicken. Also, this is where you’ll want to add in some chicken broth or some soup stock to give it that bit of flavour. A tablespoon or two should be fine.

Turn the heat down to a low and leave it to simmer until the chicken is tender.

While that is cooking, we’ll look at the coriander sauce.

Rinse, dry, and chop up some coriander leaves (about 1 cup’s worth will be sufficient). Cut a clove of garlic in half and place everything into a blender and add a quarter teaspoon of salt with a quarter cup of olive oil. Blend everything into a puree, and that’s your simple homemade coriander sauce. 

Is it actually good for breastfeeding mothers?

We have used a fair number of ingredients here that contain health benefits. There’s protein, vitamin B6, and there’s magnesium, there’s also ginger. We’ve decided to list down the components and the benefits they confer in the following table:

Component	Benefit
Protein	– Repair your cells and body tissues. – Build antibodies to support a good immune system. – Help maintain muscle mass while you recover and breastfeed.
Magnesium	– Regulating muscle and nerve function, blood sugar levels, and blood pressure and making bone, and DNA. – Regulate calcium and vitamin D for bone formation and bone density.
Vitamin B6	– Helps your newborn’s brain to develop healthily. – Helps you and your newborn to have a good immune system.
Ginger	– Helps to promote breast milk supply.

Closing Words

There you have it. Braised chicken with ginger really does confer some health benefits on mothers. There’s Vitamin B6, Ginger, and there’s Chicken! If you are interested in getting the best food for lactation, we might have some articles on food that can boost breast milk and healthy food to increase breast milk. 

On the other hand, if you found the above recipe too much of a hassle and are interested in ordering food that can boost breast milk supply, feel free to give us a call and sign up with us today. Our chefs are standing by to cook you up a storm!