A Toddler Chicken Curry With Big Mango Flavor
We went with low-hanging fruit (sorry) for what follows here: we’ve long seen “mango chicken” on the menus at Thai American and Chinese American restaurants, and knew it’s not terribly uncommon to find the fruit in Indian and Pakistani stews, either–in other words, a curry sweetened with the king of fruits seemed like it could not fail.
Reader, it did not.
Sweet, tangy, just the right amount of viscosity–a thick-sauced chicken dish centered on mango makes an ideal toddler entry point into curries and thick-sauced meals, to say nothing of it being a cinch to prepare. Because of the sweetness of the fruit, it’s also quite amenable and adaptable to/with seasoning, so you can use it as a template to introduce new spices–or spiciness–or keep it baby-mouth simply by going the thick and sweet route. In part because our son has no specific allegiance with Thai or Indian foodways, and in part because I went with what I had on hand in our pantry instead of what I wanted to use (i.e., red curry paste), our version splits the difference between the two paradigms: a garam masala provides the backbeat for the dish, but it’s really the lime and fish sauce (and, optionally, sugar) added at the end that bring the funk.
(Got more mangoes? Check out our carrot-mango lassi!)
Ingredients
Rice
Topping
Instructions
Prep
- Since we’ll be blending the sauce, make a call on how you want to slice up your onion and pepper: long cuts if you’re going to keep the onion and pepper intact and visible; diced up if you’re going to blend the veggies with the sauce.
- Peel mango and remove fruit from its pit; dice mango into small pieces. Cut chicken into similar sized strips or cubes of roughly 1 inch each.
Cook and Assemble
- In a pot or Dutch oven, heat a glug of oil to Medium; once shimmering, add in your cut onion and pepper. Cook until both onion and pepper are soft, roughly 5-6 minutes.
- Add in a spoonful of ginger garlic paste (or powder versions of each), the curry powder, and the garam masala; let cook for one minute.
- Add in mango slices and cook, stirring regularly to mix mango and spice; chop up the mango as stir.
- Add in coconut milk and bring the contents of the pot to a near boil, then reduce heat until it lightly simmers. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes.
- While mango sauce simmers, make your rice: wash your rice; while it drains, add the broth, coconut milk, and ½ cup of water to a small pot and set to boil. Once it’s bubbling, add in rice, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and heat until liquid evaporates, roughly 15-17 minutes. Remove from heat and fluff with fork.
- Pour mango sauce into your blender, with or without peppers and onions; cover the top of the blender with a hand towel–it helps absorb the steam–and blend sauce mixture until smooth. If sauce is too thick, cut with a splash of broth (or coconut milk, if using lite version).
- Return sauce to the stove. Set temperature to Medium-Low; add chicken pieces. Cook until chicken is cooked through, 6-7 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Squeeze lime all around the pot; stir to integrate juice. Add in a few glugs of fish sauce and a sprinkle of sugar, then mix again; taste the sauce to check its balance. If too salty or sharp, add a bit more sugar to balance things out; if too sweet, add more fish sauce.
Serve
We favor a small bowl, with the rice placed on one half and the sauce + chicken on the other (see pic); our son can mix (or not) as he sees fit.
Adapt
As long as we’re putting a blender to use to smooth out the sauce, why not add a vegetable to the mix–say, cauliflower or zucchini? No one (child) will notice. Want to make the dish more Thai? Replace garam masala with a small spoonful of red curry paste.
