Recipe: Slow Cooked Chicken With Carrots And Lily Bulbs

In my last blog post, I wrote about my recent ‘discovery’ of using lily bulbs (Bai He) in cooking (you can read it here)

This is a recipe that I’ve slightly adapted from one I learned recently from herbalist Fran Turner. It’s a Qi, Yin and Blood tonic, tastes great and is very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

4 chicken legs
2 slices of ginger, finely chopped.
1 tsp blackstrap molasses
1 tsp Soya sauce
40g lily bulbs (Bai He)
3 carrots
10g goji berries
1 tbsp plain flour
Chicken or veg stock or water

Directions:

Remove the skin from the chicken legs and brown in a pan with a little oil, adding the molasses at the end and coating the chicken in it. Put chicken with molasses in slow cooker. Chop the carrots into large chunks and add to the slow cooker, along with all the other ingredients. Add enough stock or water to just cover everything. Cook on medium for around 8 hours, or until the chicken is cooked through and the lily bulbs are tender.

Variations:

The flour is in this recipe to thicken the dish slightly. The original didn’t have it, and you can easily leave it out if you prefer. If you’d rather do without the oil you can also leave out the browning stage – just add the chicken and molasses straight to the slow cooker.

Energetics:

In this dish the chicken is a strongly tonifying Qi and Blood tonic. The carrots support the Qi tonic action, and  Molasses and goji berries are Blood and Yin tonics. The lily bulbs are also a Yin tonic. The ginger is there for flavour, and to provide a little warmth and movement to the dish. This is a good nourishing dish, suitable for anyone, and would especially suit anyone who is Yin and Blood deficient with symptoms of dryness, Heat, and anxiety.

Enjoy!