Braised Chicken Rice (黄焖鸡)
The modern classic that you can find dotted all across China
Walk around any city in China, you’re almost guaranteed to find three things: a Lanzhou pulled noodle chain called “Lanzhou Lamian”, a Fujian-style dumpling shop called “Shaxian Xiaochi”, and increasingly… braised chicken rice, led by a chain called “Yangmingyu”.
These types of chains are kind of an interesting modern Chinese phenomenon. They’re honestly like the least standardized franchises ever. They have the look and feel of a little family run place . Quality can vary widely, and sometimes even the menu can change. And while an MBA student might frown at that dynamic, it’s honestly what can make them worth going to. Because while sometimes you can get a mediocre meal there… you can also sometimes get a good meal. Which’s a hell of a lot more than you can say for, I dunno, Applebees.
So right. Yangmingyu. They’re everywhere, and’ve even expanded abroad under the name “Yang’s chicken rice”. They make a sort of braised chicken that’s native to the Shandong province called Huangmenji. It’s a bit different than the very most traditional versions of the dish – Yangmingyu uses leg (not whole chicken), included dried shiitake mushrooms in their braise, serves it in a still-scalding bubbling small claypot along with rice, and you have the choice of adding in a whole bunch of add-ins (e.g. Enoki, tofu puffs, etc.)
Their success also spawned a lot of copycats, because as you’ll see in a second… this version of Huangmenji’s pretty easy. And while even though we usually like to dig deeper and give the very most traditional version of certain dishes, we felt like it’d be most appropriate to teach you this ‘fast food’ style.
Ingredients
Chicken leg -or- whole -or- wings, ~500g. Ok, so here’s the thing. This is one of those Chinese poultry-on-the-bone dishes. I know that’s a non-starter for some folks – there’s a reason why otherwise completely authentic Chinese restaurants in the USA’ll still swap for boneless. But just try it – braised dishes like this one are a great introduction to on-the-bone dishes. If you’re still unconvinced, I’d suggest using wings: same essence, a little more annoying to eat with chopsticks, but you’ve got the advantage of knowing where the bones are. Lastly, know that the traditional Shandong version’s a whole chicken, so you could also just do that.
Marinade for the chicken: 1 tbsp each light soy sauce (生抽), liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒) cornstarch (生粉). Real simple marinade just to get some base flavor here.
Aromatics/spices: 1 inch ginger (姜), 5 inches escallion/welsh onion (大葱) -or- ~5 scallion whites, 2 star anise (八角). Ginger and escallion’s smashed. If you can’t find escallion, swap with five of the white portion of the scallion. If you have no idea what escallion/welsh onion is and don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, check out the note below. Escallion’s also known as Daepa or Chinese leek.
Tianmianjiang Sweet Bean Paste (甜面酱), two heaping tbsp Ah, sweet bean paste. The paste that’s neither sweet (it’s intensely savory) nor made from beans (it’s made from fermenting steamed buns IIRC). This stuff is great though, and form the base of this flavor profile (i.e. Jiangxiang, ‘fragrant sauce’). If you can’t find this, you might be able to get away with playing around with Hoisin, but it’s so fundamental to the dish that I’d really recommend seeking it out first. It’s used pretty extensively in Korean cooking too.
Light soy sauce (生抽), 2 tbsp.
Granulated sugar, 2 tbsp.
Dried shiitake mushrooms (冬菇）four, reconstituted in 500 mL of hot, boiled water. We’ll reconstitute this for ~1 hour in hot boiled water, though you could also do ~8 hours in cool water if that works out better for you (i.e., before work). Be sure to save your soaking liquid! The stuff tastes fantastic and’s going to be the base of our sauce.
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tbsp. For use while stir-frying.
White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ¼ tsp.
MSG (味精), ¼ tsp. Optional for this dish but recommended.
Slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch (生粉) and 1 tbsp water.
1/2 green (青辣椒) and red mild chili (红辣椒). Mostly for a bit of color, and hey, who doesn’t like peppers. This variety of chili that’s used in China is actually the paprika chili, but you could swap the green for anaheims… or both with bell pepper. You could also just skip it if you’d rather.
Toasted sesame oil (麻油). For finishing.
White rice. To serve. If you don’t have a rice cooker, steaming’s probably the most fool-proof way to cook white rice. Quick ‘recipe’ for steamed rice in the notes below.
Also, quick note that in some versions of this dish nowadays, people’ll load it up with dried chilis and make it spicy. If you like that, totally – go for it. We just prefer this as a more isolated Jiangxiang flavor.
Process
Now note that for the final cooking, you’ve got a few options. You can:
(A) Do the whole thing in a wok.
(B) Do the whole thing in a large cast iron dutch oven.
(C) Start in a wok, move to a dutch oven.
(D) Start in a wok, move to a claypot.
(E) Do any of the above, then once it’s ready for the final reduction, swap to a individually portioned claypot <-- this is what the fast food joints do
We went with wok --> claypot --> individually portioned claypots for authenticity bonus points. But honestly any of the above would be fine. Just in case, for replication purposes… we mostly tested using (D), i.e. Wok --> claypot.
Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms. The one hour soaking time could even be cut down to ~30-45 minutes if you’re in a rush and you cover your bowl. For a cold water soak, ~4-5 hours is enough but I figure you could maybe soak some before work then come home to some prepped mushrooms for Huangmenji.
Cleave the chicken into ~1.5 inch wide pieces. Alright, if you watch the video, note that neither me now Steph are the best butchers in the world. Basically, for leg you cut out the extra bit of boneless meat on the thigh and chop that into a couple boneless pieces. Then go at it and cleave the chicken up, aiming the side of the cleaver that’s closest to you to the bone (we didn’t do a great job of that in the video, unfortunately. Win some and lose some somedays). If the knife ever gets stuck on the bone, don’t move it, and instead take the whole leg and smack it down against the board.
Marinate the chicken for ~30 minutes. Be sure to mix well.
Slice up the chilis, crush the escallion and the ginger, de-stem the mushrooms, tear the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces, strain the mushroom soaking liquid. The chili is ~1.5 inch sections like the chicken – you can cut into diamonds, or alternatively just do the Chinese rolling cut. The escallion you can do two ~2.5 inch sections, and slightly crush each.
Pass the marinated chicken pieces through oil, drop in at 200C, fry on high for ~3 minutes until dark golden brown. Ok, so you really don’t need that much oil to pass through – in the video, we only used two cups here. Get it up to a blistering 200C, drop in the chicken pieces, and fry until ‘reddish-brown’ – i.e. a dark golden brown. If you’d rather pre-stir fry your chicken instead of passing through oil… sure. Just make sure they look something like this by the end. Let the chicken sit on a strainer and the oil drain out.
Stir fry, then braise. As always, first longyau: that is, get you wok piping hot (about steak searing temperature), shut off the heat, add in your oil (here about two tablespoons), and give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Heat on medium now, immediately:
Go in with the escallion/scallion whites, the ginger, and the star anise. Fry for ~45 seconds, or until it smells real nice. Scooch the aromatics up the side of the wok.
Add in the Tianmianjiang sweet bean paste. Frying this paste give the base of the dish’s flavor. It has a tendency to stick. Once it’s just starting to stick to the wok…
Pour the one tablespoon of liaojiu wine over your spatula and around the sides of the wok. Quick ~15 second mix together.
Do the same thing with the two tablespoons of light soy sauce.
Sugar, in. Combine/let it dissolve, about ~15 seconds.
Mushroom soaking liquid, in. Up the heat to high. Wait ~1 minute until bubbling.
Chicken, mushrooms, and white pepper in. Get up to a boil.
Cover -or- swap to a claypot (and cover). If you’re using something cast iron/with a heavy lid, keep it ajar. Swap the flame to medium-low and keep at a heavy simmer for ~20 minutes.
Uncover. The liquid should be reduced by ~1/4. Swap the flame to high and let it reduce until reduced by another quarter, or one half in all.
Season with the MSG, add the slurry. Let it thicken ~20 seconds. It will not be too thick. This’s close to a stew consistency, not a sauce consistency (if that makes sense).
Add in the chilis (if using a wok, cook the chilis for ~5 seconds). Sprinkle on the toasted sesame oil. If using claypot/cast iron… cover, then shut off the heat and serve in the claypot/cast iron. If using a wok, transfer to serving bowl.
Note on steaming rice:
We’re spoiled. We’ve got a Zojirushi, which we make extensive use of. I’ve used a rice cooker so much that I honestly kind of forget how to make rice on the stovetop. Honestly, I think there’d be at least a 35% chance I’d fuck it up.
I do know how to steam rise though.
Take your rice and thoroughly rinse it ~3 times until the water’s beginning to get clear. Try to use a wider bowl/container (not a deep one), and fill that up with water until ~1/2 inch above the rice and soak for 20 minutes. Then toss that whole thing in a steamer and steam for 20 minutes on high. Fin.
Note on Escallion:
So, I fucked up.
For the last 2+ years I’ve been translating a certain Chinese ingredient as “leek”. This thing, it’s called “Dacong” in Mandarin. Literally, ‘big scallion’ – it’s one of the go-to aromatics in North China.
And I know I’m not the first person to make this mistake. Dunlop’s referred to it as leek. Elaine from ChinaSichuanFood has too. And I mean, come on, leek IS a dead ringer for Dacong.
But… it’s not leek. Big thanks to /u/desmond2046 for bringing it up and teaching me that there’s difference. Dacong is Allium Fistolum – you might see it as Welsh onion, bunching onion, Japanese bunching onion, negi (Japan), escallion (Jamaica), or daepa (Korea). Leek, meanwhile is Allium ampeloprasum… and after looking it up a bit, it appears that Dacong is more closely related to scallion than leek.
So here’s the thing – speaking in broad generalities… Dacong is used as an aromatic in the north of China, while in the south of China people’ll cut off the white portion of the scallion and use that in much the same way. So really, don’t go crazy trying to source Dacong if it’s hard for you – just go with the southern Chinese style and use scallion.
(I’m also wondering what the best translation is by the way… I’ve heard that it’s most commonly available in Korean supermarkets abroad, should I just go with daepa from now on? I do sort of like the word ‘escallion’, and I feel like I’ve definitely seen that before)