Sichuan Chicken

Chicken fried dry with whole chillies until the pieces are almost crisp, with no sauce at all.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken.

Ingredients

• 700 g boneless chicken thighs, in 3 cm pieces
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 25 dried red chillies, snipped in half
• 1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 tablespoon ginger, sliced
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 spring onions, in 2 cm lengths

Method

1. Toss the chicken with the wine and salt and leave it 20 minutes, then blot the pieces dry. Wet chicken will steam, and this dish depends on it not doing that.
2. Fry the chicken in the oil over a high heat, in two batches so the pan stays hot, for about 7 minutes a batch. Keep going past the point where it looks cooked: the skin side should go from golden to dark and the edges should be genuinely crisp.
3. Turn the heat down to low and lift the chicken to one side.
4. Add the chillies and peppercorns to the oil and stir them for about 45 seconds. Low heat and keep them moving — the chillies should darken a shade and smell toasted, and they go from that to acrid in a few seconds.
5. Add the garlic and ginger for 20 seconds.
6. Return the chicken, add the sugar and the spring onions, and toss everything together for a minute.
7. Serve it dry. Nothing is added to make a sauce, and the chillies are there to be pushed aside rather than 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