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Chicken and Rice Cakes: Ingredients for healthy chicken and rice cakes

Are you struggling to get your chicken and rice in? The meal of this week is a bit different. Although I have aimed this tutorial at bodybuilders on a pre-contest diet, this recipe is one of the best choices for anyone with weight loss plans who is after a tasty meal idea.

As you may already know, I am deep into bodybuilding. I competed and placed in late 2012. I did struggle with the constant “force feeding” of chicken, rice and broccoli. If you have done a pre-contest bodybuilding diet, you will know how tough this can be. It got so bad for me (early on in the 20-week diet plan) that I literally wanted to cry every 2 hours when the time came to get this bland mixture down.

Because I am really into my food, I looked at better ways to cook chicken and rice for pre-contest. As this diet is extremely strict, you are very limited with the type of seasoning you can use. Anything with sugar is a massive “NO NO” and if you look at the ingredients on most seasonings, you will see sugar and salt. All sauces are out of the question, too, as these have big calorie contents, and most, again, are loaded with sugar and salt.

The calories I got had to come mainly from chicken and rice. So, these “chicken and rice cakes” are something that I managed to invent while struggling one weekend, and had a bit of extra time.

The measurements of chicken and rice will vary for each person, if you are competing. If you are just using this as a healthy option, you can follow the measurements that I used.

 

Ingredients You’ll Need

4 chicken breasts

300g of wholegrain rice (uncooked)

Ground black pepper

1 chili

1 clove of garlic

A bunch of fresh coriander

No-sugar-no-salt seasoning. I used Singapore seasoning made by Penzeys Spices but any other seasoning that meets the criteria for your diet will do.

Olive oil or 1 cal non-stick spray.

 

Step 1

Cook the rice until it is fully cooked and ready to be eaten. Leave it to cool slightly, but don’t allow it to go completely cold.

Step 2

Wash and cut the chicken breast into chunks. We are not aiming for anything pretty here. Just chop it up and spray with the 1 cal non-stick spray a few times.

Step 3

Crush or finely chop the garlic (if you have seen good fellas, you can use a razor blade) and cut the chili up. Make sure you remove the seeds from the chili if you don’t want it to be too hot.

Step 4

Pull apart or chop the coriander finely, and mix with the garlic, chili and coriander.

Step 5

Season the chopped chicken with the Singapore seasoning or whatever else you chose to use. The Singapore seasoning will give the food a nice spicy Asian taste. Now, mix in the chili, garlic, pepper and coriander. It is best to coat all of the chicken with this seasoning, so get stuck into it with your hands.

Step 6

Put the raw chicken covered in seasoning into a food processor, and also add the rice. Blend this in short bursts; you don’t want to make a raw chicken and rice soup! It is personal preference on how fine you want to go here but I like to keep it fairly course.

Step 7

Once this is mixed or “blended,” empty it into a bowl. Now, mould the mixture into a ball. Half the ball, and half again; you should end up with 4 parts. Nice! Now squash these parts down so they are each about an inch thick.

Step 8

Use the 1 cal spray to lightly grease a baking tray or some tin foil. Now place the 4 cakes on the tray and again spray with 1 cal spray. This will give the cakes a crispy finish. If you are not on a pre-contest diet, you could top with Parmesan cheese. I haven’t tried this but I imagine that it would finish off the cakes nicely.

Step 9

Put in a preheated oven at 180 Celsius or gas mark 4 for around 30 mins or until they are browned. Make sure that these cakes are cooked thoroughly before eating.

Step 10

Serve with your favorite veg, and eat while hot if you can. I have also eaten these cold as I will normally make a big batch. It is best not to re-heat these as re-heated chicken can cause you problems if it isn’t done right.

Chicken-and-rice-cakes-624x468That’s my chicken and rice cakes with grilled broccoli!

As I enjoy experimenting in the kitchen, I had to come up with a recipe that was healthy enough. Still there are things that you could do to make this diet more exciting, like add onions, for instance (but is a no-no on my pre-contest diet) or cheese;you can replace the spices to others of your choosing, or, maybe, make a blue cheese source to spray over the top. I’m getting hungry now, so I’m going to wrap it up!

 

I hope this information has been useful to you. It certainly was for me when i fancied a change from the usual chicken, rice and broccoli mix on my pre-contest diet. Good luck if you are going to try this, but let me know how it turns out.

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