Dry Pot Chicken

Chicken and hard vegetables cooked down in a wok until almost nothing wet is left, then carried to the table still in the pan.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken.

Ingredients

For the chicken

• 700 g chicken thighs, boned and in 3 cm pieces
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon cornflour

The vegetables

• 250 g lotus root, peeled and sliced 3 mm thick
• 200 g waxy potato, sliced 3 mm thick
• 3 celery sticks, in 4 cm lengths
• 1 onion, in petals
• 1 green pepper, in squares

The seasoning

• 2 tablespoons chilli bean paste
• 15 dried chillies, snipped in half
• 1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
• 30 g ginger, sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, sliced
• 4 tablespoons flavourless oil
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 100 ml water
• 4 spring onions, in lengths
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method

1. IT IS DRY AT THE END BUT IT IS NOT COOKED DRY THROUGHOUT, and that is the whole difference between this and a plate of chicken fried with chillies. A hundred millilitres of water goes in, the lid goes on, and the hard vegetables cook through in the steam; then the lid comes off and it is driven hard until the liquid has gone and what is left clings to everything. Cooked dry from the start, the lotus root and potato are still raw when the chicken is past it.
2. THE PASTE GOES IN AS A PASTE AND NOT AS WHOLE DRY CHILLIES. Chilli bean paste fried in oil until the oil reddens is doing something different from dried chillies tossed in whole -- it coats, where they season the oil and are pushed aside on the plate. Both are in here and they are not the same ingredient.
3. Chicken tossed with the wine, soy, salt and cornflour. Left 20 minutes.
4. Lotus root and potato sliced and held in cold water until needed, then drained and dried thoroughly. Both discolour and both stick if they go in wet.
5. Two tablespoons of oil in a wok over a high heat. Chicken in a single layer, left 2 minutes to colour, then turned and fried 4 minutes more until browned all over. Lifted out.
6. Lotus root and potato into the same wok, 5 minutes, until the edges are translucent and catching. Lifted out with the chicken.
7. Heat to LOW. Last of the oil, then the dried chillies and peppercorns, stirred 45 seconds. They must not darken past red-brown; burnt chilli is bitter through the whole dish and there is no sauce here to hide it.
8. Chilli bean paste in, stirred 1 minute until the oil turns red. Then ginger and garlic, 30 seconds.
9. Everything back in with the onion, celery, pepper, dark soy, sugar and the water. Heat to high, stirred to coat, LID ON, 4 minutes.
10. LID OFF and the heat kept high. Stirred and tossed 4 to 5 minutes while the liquid goes. It is ready when the base of the wok is dry and the sauce is a coating rather than a pool.
11. Spring onions and sesame oil through, off the heat.
12. Served in the pan it was cooked in, or tipped into a cast-iron dish set over a low flame at the table, where it keeps crisping gently as it is eaten.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes