Hawaiian BBQ Chicken Fried Rice |Cooking With Amanda

A little while ago there was this moment of utter desperation in my kitchen.

My toddler Em had been sick, hadn't eaten anything in three days (THREE DAYS!!) and I just wanted to make something she'd have an appetite for.

And something I'd have an appetite for, because if I don't love allthethings Hawaiian BBQ then I don't know what. (Hawaiian BBQ Chicken Tacos or Pineapple Pork Chops).

But, alas, the little one. Teething. Fussy. Blocked nose. Cough. Too little sleep during the night, but too alert to catch up on it.

It really always happens all at once, doesn't it?!

So, naturally, I spent five hours cooking a toddler-friendly gourmet meal.

Or 20 minutes cooking fried rice, same thing, really...

I'm not kidding when I say that I cooked this entire dish (sans the vegetable chopping, that happened during a miraculous five minutes of scream-free floor time) with a baby glued to my hip.

And a (finally!) hungry toddler chatting into both my ears simultaneously, however she managed to achieve such a thing.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying it's fun to cook like this.

I'm just saying this is a recipe that works if you have to do it that way.

But Nora, what if I NEVER have 5 miraculous minutes of quiet floor time, so I can chop the vegetables for this Hawaiian BBQ Chicken Fried Rice?

Well, I'm glad you asked, my friend.

I, of all people, know too well what it's like to have an always, ALWAYS fussy, want-to-be-held-or-else, no-not-the-carrier-i-want-your-arms kind of baby.

Here's what you can do:

Prep the veggies the night before.

The beauty of this is that you'll either have another adult home with you to watch the little bundle of ~~fussiness~~ joy, or that tiny person will hopefully have gone to sleep at some point.

Now a word of warning: chopped onions STINK. Like, literally, they stink up your entire fridge. So if you're sensitive to that at all, I recommend enduring a minute of angry cries so you can cut those onions on the fly.

The carrots, pepper and pineapple (if you're using fresh and not chunks in juice) can easily do 24h in the fridge, packed up into covered storage containers. You can also dice the chicken breast a day in advance and keep it in a separate closed food storage container. (If you don't have any containers, I recommend Pyrex glass storage containers.)

The rest is, as they say, peanuts. A bit of chicken browning, stir frying and boiling a pot of rice along the way. And bingo bango (yes, bingo bango, indeed), you have an easy dinner sur la table in 30 minutes or less.

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Hawaiian BBQ Chicken Fried Rice Recipe

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Ingredients

1 tablespoon Vegetable Oil
1 large Chicken Breast, diced
1 cup Long Grain Rice
2 large Onions, diced
3 large Carrots, diced
3 large Red Peppers, diced
1 cup Frozen Peas
1 Pineapple, diced
1/2 cup Barbecue Sauce

For Serving (Optional):

Shredded Red Cabbage
Sliced Scallions

Directions

Cook the rice according to the package directions. Drain and rinse under cold water.
In the meantime, heat the oil in a large 12-inch skillet. Add the onion and carrot and cook until softened, about 5 minutes, while stirring often. Add the peppers and peas and cook for another 2-3 minutes or util the peas are thawed and piping hot.
Add the ham and pineapple and cook for another 2-3 minutes, stirring often. Add the cooked and rinsed rice and cook for 2-3 minutes again, stirring constantly.
Finally, stir through the BBQ sauce and serve immediately with sliced red cabbage and scallions, if you like.