Easy Chicken Claypot Dinner

My mom gave me some claypots awhile back when I was still living with Irving and Hannah, but I never had any time (or motivation) to cook anything besides pasta, crock pot stews, and fried rice. So, I gave them back to her a year later since I've never touched it. Now that I am wife, I started making more interesting dinners and ventured into claypot rice one night because John really likes lap cheong, but I had to use a rice cooker instead since I no longer had the claypots!

I always thought claypots can be used for claypot rice only. And maybe some curries like rendang or mutton curry, which I probably wouldn't bother cooking because they both sound very time consuming. Hence, I was never interested in owning claypots. No point having them take up space in my kitchen.

Then a month ago, John's bff, Michael, took us to some hipster-ish hole in the wall cafe called FuseBox, and their special of the day was some sizzling claypot chicken with veggies served with sizzling claypot rice. It wasn't anything special tbh but that meal itself cost $25! Just because it was served in claypot! After that, I called my mom and told her I wanted the claypots back hahaha. I didn't know they were so versatile for one pot meals and required no oil. This means easy but delicious meals that doesn't break the bank. Seriously though, $25 is ridiculous! The claypot they used better be made of some special clay from some blessed legendary mountain in the Himalayans or something. Otherwise really not worth the money, can?

Anyway, turns out this soup is so easy. The ingredients were basically:

• Half an onion (chopped)
• 1 large carrot
• 1/4 firm tofu
• 2 boneless and skinless chicken thighs (cut into smaller pieces)
• 4 white mushrooms (quartered)
• dash of thyme, rosemary, kosher salt, ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup chicken broth

That's it. Layer the onions on the bottom of the bowl, put the chicken pieces on top, sprinkle the seasonings, then spread the rest of the ingredients on top. Finally, pour the broth in and just cook on the stove top for 15-20 minutes until everything is cooked through. 

Tasted better than that $25 claypot at FuseBox if I should say so myself. And my mom said the claypot only cost her $2? Ingredients used probably only cost $5 max (chicken thighs on sale for 99 cents per lb).

And there you have it! A "fancy" and "hip" claypot dinner for $5 or less. So healthy too! I really should look into more recipes for the claypot.

Happy cooking!