Kung Pao Chicken, the first recipe (宫保鸡丁)

The very first recipe we ever put out. It's, uh, a recipe.

Note from 2024: This recipe was the very first we ever put out. It’s by far the most dubious food related writing that’s ever spilled out of my pen, so much so that we put out a ‘corrected’ recipe one year later.

So don’t ‘trust’ anything that’s written below - this is copied straight here in all of its… dubiousity… because (1) this way you can get a full frontal of the Dunning-Kruger that started it all, and appreciate just how critical Steph is to everything we do on the channel and (2) some people do enjoy the recipe nonetheless - and in fairness to myself seven years ago, it’s not the worst Kung Pao recipe that ever graced the internet.

Hey, I've been living in China for about nine years and wanted to share some recipes for Chinese food. Figured I'd start with an old favorite - Kung Pao chicken.

I made a video to go with this, but I've uh... learned that making videos is a bit harder than it seems. So if you watch the video excuse my stuttering.

Basic Ingredients:

1. Chicken Thighs, 270g. Debone these and cut into cubes. You don't need to get them perfect. Many recipes use Chicken breast which you could also do, but I think it's much better to use thigh meat.

2. Dried Sichuan Chilis (大红袍), 8-10. Cut in half and deseed. If you can't get dried Sichuan chilis, dried Arbol or something similar should work.

3. Fresh Erjingtiao (二荆条), 1. Cut into ~2cm pieces. I figure erjingtiao chilis would be tough to get outside of China, so feel free to sub it with any sort of chili you can get locally. This chili is quite mild, so sub it with anything you can find that's lower on the Scoville scale. Something like Anaheims (or even Jalapeno in a pinch) would probably be ok. The Chili should not be too spicy if you took a bite from it straight.

4. Green Onions, white part only. 2-5 sections (depending on the size). Quarter these and chop into roughly the same length as your fresh chili.

5. Garlic gloves, 3-5. I like using whole crushed cloves because they're easier to stir fry and actually have a quite nice taste/texture to munch on at the end. You could obviously mince them if you like.

6. Peanuts, 1/2 cup. Get unroasted, unsalted peanuts. If you're feeling lazy you could get salted roasted peanuts I suppose, but the texture's not quite right and it would be easy for the dish to become overly salty.

7. Sichuan Chili Bean Paste (川式豆瓣酱), 1 TBSP. This is sort of a controversial ingredient for this dish, but after trying many methods I think it's a really important ingredient. Discussion on the Chili bean paste (doubanjiang) at the end.

Ingredients for your Marinade:

1. Egg White from 1 egg. This will form the base of the marinade.

2. Rice Wine (料酒), 1 tsp. In the West this is usually called Shaoxin Wine.

3. Sesame Oil, 1 tsp. Toasted of course.

4. Sugar, 1 tsp.

5. Cornstarch, 2 tsp.

Ingredients for your Sauce:

1. Water or Stock, 3 TBSP. I like using water and a touch (about 1/2 tsp) stock concentrate.

2. Dark Chinese Vinegar (陈醋), 2 tsp.

3. Sugar, 2.5 TBSP. That's not a typo. It uses quite a bit of sugar.

4. Rice Cooking Wine (料酒), 1 tsp

5. Light Soy Sauce, 1.5 tsp.

6. Dark Soy Sauce, 1/2 tsp.

Other Ingredients:

1. Slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch and a touch of water.

2. 1 tsp sesame oil and 1 tsp vinegar to finish the seasoning.

Process:

1. Pour hot water into your peanuts. This will make them easier to peel. Leave them for 10 minutes and prep some of the rest of your ingredients.

2. Marinate your chicken thigh cubes. Toss your marinade into with your chicken cubes, and massage the marinade in. The beautiful thing about Chinese cooking is that because these are small cubes, this sucker's gunna be finished marinading in like 30 minutes tops.

3. Peel peanuts. Two ways to peel - either pinch the end of the peanut as if it's a shrimp tail, or rub the peanut between your fingers. I prefer the second method because if you get on a roll you can peel a few at once.

4. Deep fry your peanuts. Or I guess 'shallow fry' might be a more accurate description. For this step, we're using the method of reguoliangyou (hot pot, cool oil) - that is, heat up the pan, then basically add in your oil and the ingredients at the same time. This helps prevent burning - if you're cooking Chinese food and you feel like some of your ingredients just seem to burn immediately, this is the technique you're missing. The peanuts should fry for about 5 minutes, med-high heat. Take out the peanuts for the next step. Strain your oil if you didn't do a good job peeling.

5. Stir fry the chicken. For this step we do reguoreyou (hot pot, hot oil) - basically, what we do in western cooking all the time. For this step especially, your pot should be screaming hot. If you have a Chinese style burner that's great BUT it's no excuse not to stir fry. I cook Chinese food in the US sometimes, no problem. If you can sear a steak you can do a stir fry. Stir fry until the chicken is cooked - for me this was about three minutes. Take out your chicken, wipe your pot.

6. Put a smaller amount of oil in (~1 TBSP) or so, and using the reguoliangyou (hot pot, cold oil) method stir fry your dried chilis on high. As soon as they start to turn color, take them out. For me this was like 30 seconds.

7. Put in your garlic, green onions, and fresh chili. Stir fry for a bit, then hit it with your chili bean paste (doubanjiang). Break up the paste a bit and stir fry, ~30 seconds. All of this is high heat remember.

8. Add your sauce. The pot is hot so it should reduce quite a bit almost immediately. See the thickness, and add enough of the slurry to ticken it to your liking. This is often eyeballed in Chinese cooking, but here I added 1 tsp of cornstarch with a touch of water.

9. Add back your chicken. Fry for another 30 seconds or so, then turn off your heat. Add back your dried chilis and peanuts. Stir vigorously.

10. Add your final seasoning, the 1 tsp of vinegar and 1 tsp of sesame oil. You can taste for salinity, but the chili bean paste has salt in it so we should be good on that front. Serve with rice.

A note about ingredients: Notice what's not in here: cucumber, carrots, lettuce, whatever. You can obviously do whatever you want, but honestly those ingredients kinda clash with the dish. Some restaurants will add these things, mostly because they skimp on meat.

Also notice that there's no Sichuan peppercorn in here. Some of the recipes I've read really overdo it with the Sichuan peppercorn (looking at you, Fuschia Dunlop...). Kung Pao chicken is part of the "lychee burnt pepper" flavor profile of Sichuan cuisine (荔枝煳辣) which means it is: (1) a little spicy (2) a little sweet and (3) a little sour. The numbing taste of Sichuan peppercorns ain't in the flavor profile.

Now, many Sichuan cooks will still use small, almost unnoticable quantities of Sichuan peppercorn in many dishes... sort of like how we use black pepper in Western cooking. For Kung Pao, many Sichuan chefs will add a tiny amount of Sichuan peppercorn. You can use it if you like, but no more than a couple. This isn't the mala flavor profile.

Now, finally - about chili bean paste, doubanjiang. Some Sichuan cooks will absolutely insist that it has no place in a Kung Pao chicken. I think this is bollucks - doubanjiang is used in many restaurant in China, and it gives it that wonderful, red Kung Pao color. Some people use red chili powder to color it but I think this adds way too much heat. You obviously shouldn't use too much doubanjiang - this is just a tablespoon. Too much and the Chili bean paste can dominate the dish.

If you want to do super, super traditional Kung Pao... like true to the original recipe 100 years ago, take out the chili bean paste and add a tsp or two of salt.