Chinese Style Baked Lemon Chicken with Sesame Brown Rice

Enjoy Chinese takeout made in your kitchen. This baked version of Lemon Chicken with Sesame Rice also features sushi brown rice for healthy yet yummy dinner made for chopsticks.

Another month, another Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day! Just to recap, this is the group where 1) you are assigned a food blogger, 2) you pick a recipe from his/her blog to recreate, and 3) everyone reveals who they had on the assigned date.

It’s been fun seeing an influx of new bloggers in Group C so I was thrilled to get Mary @ The Egg Farm. Mary has an inspirational story, go read about her here. I’ll wait 🙂

So, along with the fun and fab stories she shares about living on a small “hobby ranch” in Northern California (think emus, donkeys, goats and of course, chickens), Mary has so many delectable recipes in her archives along with inviting photos.

Serena & I have been wanting to feature more chicken recipes so that was really the only thing that helped me narrow it down to Mary’s Chinese Style Lemon Chicken. Other “non-chicken” recipes I was eyeing up: Squash Dinner Rolls, Heirloom Tomato Tart with Basil & Gruyere, Lemon Ricotta Pancakes and Spicy Garlic Dill Pickles, just to name a few.

But back to this Chinese Style Baked Lemon Chicken.

The only two tweaks I made to Mary’s original recipe were:

1) Baking instead of frying the chicken. I was skeptical but it worked! I followed her recipe up until you put it into peanut oil in the pan. Instead:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Arrange chicken pieces so they are not touching each other. Coat chicken with cooking spray. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes.

2) Swapping in brown sushi rice for regular steamed rice and using these measurements:

• 1 cup uncooked sushi or short grain brown rice
• 1/4 cup sliced green onions (white and green part)
• 1 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• Pinch of salt

Cook rice according to package. When rice is done, mix in green onions, sesame seeds and salt.

I gotta say, this was really tasty and I was happy to have it for leftovers for the next day too.

Do you ever cook your favorite Asian restaurant dishes at home? What are they?