Takeout-Style Kung Pao Chicken (Diced Chicken With Peppers and Peanuts) Recipe

Why It Works

• Dark-meat chicken is tossed in a marinade designed to optimize its natural meatiness and improve juiciness and browning characteristics.
• Stir-frying meat and vegetables in batches ensures that each is exposed to the maximum heat of the wok for better flavor and texture.
• Sweet, sour, and savory elements come together in the simple sauce.

As a child my absolute favorite chinese dish was takeout-style kung pao chicken. This smasher has very small to do with the food I ate while traveling in mainland China. But just because it ‘s a Chinese-American standard, accomplished with slightly-gloppy-sauce and mild spice does n’t make cube chicken with peppers and peanuts any less delightful.

actually, possibly it ‘s equip, as kung pao chicken, the Sichuan classical made with tons of hot dry chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, and peanuts in a vinegary sauce is the where this dish finds its roots.

Trade out most of the dry chiles for diced bell peppers and celery, use white vinegar in seat of the dark Chinkiang vinegar, and you ‘re basically there. All you need is a bottomless pot of tea, some steamed white rice, possibly a side of testis drop or hot and dark soup, and a luck cookie or two and you ‘ve hit lunch-special nirvana. hera ‘s how I make it at home .

Marinate the Chicken and Get it Brown

J. Kenji López-Alt
First up, I thinly marinate my chicken, using our basic guidelines for chinese marinades. Chunks of dark-meat chicken are marinated in a mix of salt, sugar, flannel pepper, soy sauce sauce, Shaoxing wine, vegetable oil, and a touch of cornstarch. Dark kernel can survive the high heat of a wok much better than white kernel, and it ‘s highly cost-efficient, particularly if you learn how to debone chicken thighs yourself .

About 20 minutes in the marinade is enough to get the spirit stuck securely to the surface of the meat .

As with all stir-fries, I follow my own Wok Skills 101 moral, namely, cooking meats and vegetables in batches to ensure that each is exposed to blazing eminent heat, then recombining them with the sauce at the end.

J. Kenji López-Alt
With a rackety, smoking-hot wok, the chicken should take on color in precisely a matter of minutes. lightly browned but still raw in the center is what we ‘re going for hera. Do n’t worry about that raw focus on : The chicken will continue to cook via residual heat once it gets transferred to a bowl and set aside, and it ‘ll get heated up once more in the sauce belated on.

Stir-Fry Vegetables in Batches

The future step is to stir-fry the vegetables. I use crimson and green bell peppers cut into big dice, along with celery that ‘s cut into equal-sized pieces.

J. Kenji López-Alt
If you have a reasonably mighty burner, you ‘ll credibly be able to cook the celery and peppers in concert. differently, you ‘ll want to cook them in batches, letting the anoint come to a light fastball in the bottomland of the wok before adding each batch of vegetables. The finish is to get some char and color on them before they soften besides much—this should n’t take more than a minute or two.

J. Kenji López-Alt
once the vegetables are done, in go the peanuts. traditional mainland Chinese recipes will have you par-cook raw peanuts by roasting, simmering, or frying before you subsequently stir-fry them. thankfully, this is not a traditional mainland Chinese recipe, and roasted peanuts straight off the supermarket ledge do barely fine.

Add Aromatics, not ( Too a lot ) heating system

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now layer in the aromatics. They start with finely minced garlic, ginger, and scallions, the holy trinity of Chinese-American cuisine. I give the mix a few tosses just so it loses its bleak border before adding in a handful of dried red chiles .

If you ‘ve ever eaten this dish at a Chinese-American restaurant, you ‘ll know that it ‘s hot in name only. There ‘s not a lot heat to warrant the one crimson chili that gets printed on the menu next to the deed. In this case, the chiles are in truth more for their roasty aroma than for actual genus capsicum inflame. ( Though if you ‘d like, you can slit them open to spill out some of their hot innards. )

finally, the chicken goes back in for a immediate heat-through and a flip .

coat in a Thick, Glossy Sauce

J. Kenji López-Alt
last step : add the sauce, which you ‘ve thoughtfully pre-mixed and had ready to go from the start—right ? It ‘s a bare blend of soy sauce sauce, chicken broth, vinegar, sesame oil, carbohydrate, and cornstarch. After dumping it over the ingredients, a promptly pass over the hotness should thicken it up enough to coat each assemble in a slick shininess without getting besides gloppy.

Ok, a short gloppiness is very well. It ‘s an essential character of the experience, properly ?

I get a little dizzy when I see Chinese-American food like this. Do n’t get me wrong, I besides get dizzy when I see mainland Chinese food, with thousands of years of growth and tradition poured into it, but there ‘s a reason those Upper West Side Cantonese restaurants all do so well, and it ‘s got something to do with food like this.

J. Kenji López-Alt