How your go-to takeout spot for Chinese food manages to get even nubbins of white meat chicken to feel, well, velvety on the tongue is precisely how you get small children to eat breast meat yourself. Velveting is the cooking equivalent of what conditioner is to shampoo: it creates a soft and silky texture while ensuring sauce sticks to your meat.
You’re probably thinking that means a process; you’re not entirely wrong. But it’s so entirely elemental that the effort and expertise required is only a little more involved than the poaching method described above–in fact, not only is there poaching in this one (a briefer one) but you could stop right at the poaching and still. So it’s a bit more, but it’s also ridiculously easy to get great results. It goes like this:
(*To cook fully via poaching–and thus skip step #3–just leaving chicken pieces in the pot of boiling water for an additional 30-45 seconds: i.e., 75-90 seconds for small/thigh pieces, or 90-120 seconds for thicker/breast pieces.)
Let’s put velveting to work in a quick stir fry that gives your kid everything he/she needs–lean protein, vegetables, grains–in a simple and delicious way. Bright and buttery is the focus of our stir fry sauce, so it’s great for toddlers; if you’ve got older ones and/or you think your child can handle something more conventional, up the soy sauce and 86’ the butter and orange.
Recipe will produce enough food for three or four diners; halve proportions if cooking solely for one adult and one child.
Place a few pieces of chicken and vegetables over or next a small mound of rice, then zest a bit of orange peel over the top (or squeeze a bit more orange if your child might be revulsed by the sight).
Any combination of vegetables will work; pick the ones your child prefers–just do two for both familiarity and color variety. You can make beef and broccoli using most of the same techniques here: see our recipe for how. Pro tip: place cooked rice into wok, then drop the leftover egg yolk on top; stir to mix yolk into rice, then cook for roughly 30-45 seconds.
Brad (the Dad) is the founder and Chief Recipe Officer of New Dad's Kitchen. His own cooking/feeding journey started humbly during his son's infancy, preparing and managing his son's bottle intake in order to support his wife; it has since blossomed into a full-on passion to feed his child and family delicious and healthy meals that can satisfy both a toddler and his very tired parents.
