Here's a Chinese version of comfort food, sometimes referred to as soy sauce chicken in restaurants. Instead of steaming over water, the chicken cooks over a soy sauce marinade, which is then reduced to a sauce that captures all the flavor. Start marinating a day ahead, and you'll have an easy main dish for any night of the week.
This was really good - mine did not lack flavor at all, but I did use boneless chicken thighs and tossed the chicken in the marinade the night before, so it marinade almost a full day. You could make this in any kind of steamer - bamboo, vegetable, I even used one designed to go in the microwave! Worked great and was ultra-fast. Very easy and tasty - I loved the Asian flavors.
My husband is a Chinese American, who loves a soy sauce chicken. While not the same as the real thing, he loves the flavors of this dish. I've made it several times and have found that with larger chicken breasts, you need to increase the cooking time to about 30 minutes. In those cases, I have doubled the marinade to make sure that I have enough sauce to serve with the chicken. We're making it again this weekend!
I prepared this as described, but used a vegetable steamer since I also didn't have a bamboo steamer. It lives up to it's name because the kitchen smelled WONDERFUL! However, the chicken was just ok. I'm thinking maybe boneless thighs would be better. The breasts didn't absorb enough flavor after marinating a little over 6 hrs. I served with basmati rice. I probably wouldn't make this again.
