Vietnamese Chicken Meatballs

I have some leftover chicken. Do you? Let’s make Vietnamese shredded meatballs.

Step one:

You have these bits of chicken left over. Let’s make stock! Trust me we are still making food too.

The chicken. Whole chicken or like four leg quarters. Couple of ribs of that celery that’s in the back of the fridge. A few carrots from same. Got half an onion laying around? Me too. Let’s go. Boil that for like an hour and take out the chicken bc we want to use the meat. Debone as needed. Continue stock.

Now, get like two carrots, two ribs of celery, three cloves of garlic and a small shallot or a larger third of an onion. Peel and then slice real thin.

A couple of glugs of vegetable oil. In a saucepan. Heat. Medium. Cook the vegetation. When your soul tells you it’s good, throw in either a glug of Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam) or an anchovy. I screwed this up first time because I wanted three. It was so salty as to be inedible. You want to be reasonable here. One, maybe two. Or like a small glug of fish sauce. Like a bloop. Don’t do both. Learn from my failure.

Throw that shredded chicken in! When it smells like you love to it, remove and crack three eggs in as well as a splash or five of that stock you made. Make your choices! I like it wetter.

Pretty great right? Now we put it in a bowl of cornstarch and panko breadcrumbs. Get it nice and covered.

Hot vegetable oil. If you don’t have a thermometer, what you want is the end of a wooden spoon to bubble. If you do, like 375 or so.

Two teaspoons. Make them into a little football of meat mix. They should look like a little football that is a joke. Chuckle at them and dunk in the dry goods.

When you’re pretty sure they got to know each other (2-5 minutes!) hit the fryer. Say…3-5 minutes depending on the color. When it’s golden you’re done.

Serve over saffron rice or jasmine rice or honestly toasted whatever bread you have handy.

If you’d like a sauce, take some of the stock and some more nuoc mam (small amount. Again learn from my over salting. A dip of it. Just enough that you can smell it cooking) and cook it down until it’s almost coating a spoon. Then add some oyster sauce (say a tablespoon) and some butter (a pat, room temp, whisked in) and you’re set.

This is a really great dish that requires like three things you don’t already have. Give it a shot! I wanna know if you like it.