Pad Grapow (Thai basil chicken)

I drew from a few online recipes for this, but primarily this one.

Ingredients:

• 5ish Thai green chilies (I replaced with 5 tabasco / galinazo chilies; I’d do 6 next time).
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 3 shallots (I didn’t have this so I used 1/2 a small onion. Apparently red is preferred but I used white)
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vinegar (only because I didn’t have fish sauce)
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce (if you have fish sauce, this can probably be a little less)
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce (I didn’t have this, so I included a teaspoon of white vinegar)
• 1 pound ground chicken (I didn’t have a meat grinder so I did this by hand roughly following this method; key is to partially freeze the chicken 60-90 minutes beforehand)
• 1/3 cup low sodium chicken broth
• ~1 cup (maybe a little less? eyeball it) of holy basil leaves (I couldn’t find holy basil so I used regular Italian basil)

Instructions:

• Make the rice (see below)
• Slice the chilies and garlic (If I had a mortar and pestle, I’d pound them like suggested here)
• Slice the onion
• Combine: 1 teaspoon white sugar, 1 teaspoon brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• Make a fried egg (per person) the Thai way:
  • In small pan, heat ~2 tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat.
  • Once oil is very hot, fry. Spoon hot oil on top of egg. Try not to flip.
• In large pan, turn to high heat
• Add 3-4 tablespoons of oil, chilies, garlic, onion. Fry for 1-2 minutes
• Add the ground chicken and stir-fry for 2 minutes, breaking up the chicken into small bits.
• Add the sugar / sauces mixture. Stir-fry for another minute
• Deglaze the pan with the broth (i.e. “scrape up all the brown bits”?). The recipe said that the liquid would cook off quickly because I’m using high heat, but it took several minutes. Might have been because I couldn’t get my pan quite as hot as it should have been?
• Add the basil and stir-fry until wilted

Making rice. This is for 2 cups dry rice (makes ~6 cups cooked), since I like to have leftover for fried rice.
Wash the rice.
Bring 4 cups of water to boil
Add 1 tsp of salt
Add 2 tablespoons of butter, allow to melt
Stir in the rice, allow it to just return to boil, then quickly reduce the heat, cover the pot, and keep the water and rice at a simmer
Start checking at ~17 mins. Might take up to 25
Once it’s cooked, turn off heat and let it sit for another couple of minutes to finish absorbing any liquid. Take off the lid, fluff the rice with a fork and let it sit for another 2 minutes or so, so that some of the excess moisture in the rice dries off.
I got the recipe from here