Fast Friday Recipe

Today's FFR is my very own, although I'm sure I'm not the first to do it.  I tell you this because I couldn't be simpler. Seriously.  I whipped this up after having some really yummy Teriyaki Chicken and rice from the local Japanese food place.  It's soooo good, and the kids scarfed it down and wanted more.  Well, at $7.00 a plate it would get pretty pricy to order that for all of us.  So why not do it myself? Again, this is by NO MEANS original, but it's what I did on a whim one night and it works and is now in the regular rotation of meals for us.

Chicken Teriyaki ala Linda

1 pkg. Boneless Skinless chicken breasts (My family of 5- one of them a 15 year old boy requires 2 pkgs. but leaves us with a little leftover which is great for my son as a snack the next day)
1/2 bottle Teriyaki Sauce (We like Lawrey's brand)
1 tbsp. cooking oil

Rice (I cook this with my rice cooker...makes 2 cups of dry rice into 4 cooked cups in 20 minutes):
I always start this meal by starting my rice.  You can use instant rice if you like, or a rice cooker like I do. For those of you who do not have a rice cooker, but use rice on a semi-regular basis, you must get one.  They are sooo cheap and make cooking rice so easy.  It's worth the $13.00 I paid for mine.  While the rice is cooking  you can start cutting up the chicken (or in my case since I did it the night before, just put my feet up and watch 20 minutes of tv before I cook my chicken).
Chicken:
Basically I cut up the breasts (sometimes the day before to save time at dinner time) into little pieces.  Normally most recipes like this say 1 inch pieces, but I enjoy smaller more "kid-sized" pieces so I actually cut them even smaller... like 1/2-inch pieces. Heat the oil in a skillet. When nice and hot, add the chicken and begin to cook.  The smaller the pieces, the faster it cooks, so that's another perk for my small size chunks.

Once the chicken is white on the outside (again, not long at all), add the teriyaki sauce.  I use only 1/3 to 1/2 of the bottle.  Basically enough to coat my chicken, let it cook for another minute or so, then add just a little more so it's a bit saucy.  Now, I do NOT add a lot and make a real sauce for this.  But I suppose you can if you like that sort of thing.  Just depends on your family.

Usually my chicken takes no more than 5 minutes to cook.  Serve the chicken over the rice and watch them devour it!! 

Note for more health conscious folk: As you can see there are no veggies in this.  This is because I have 4 kids that are hard to please in the main dish category.  Adding the veggies will guarantee that the kids will fuss and whine and protest dinner and my aim for Fast Friday Recipes is sharing those meals that we made that everyone loved and it easy and fun to make.  If you want to add veggies, you can steam broccoli and cooked carrots and add them to your plate... this is what the Japanese Fast Food Restaurants do!