This is a restaurant dish that survives at home if the oil is hot enough both times. The first fry sets the coating and cooks the meat, the second colours it, and the aromatics go in afterwards in a nearly dry pan so the chillies toast instead of steaming.
Sichuan · Main
Chongqing Chicken Fried Twice and Tossed With Chillies
Breast meat marinated in soy and cornflour, fried once to cook and again to crisp, then tossed with garlic, Sichuan pepper and a pile of dried chillies. The chillies are the point.
- Prep45 min
- Cook15 min
- Serves3
- LevelMedium
Ingredients
| 2 | chicken breasts , about 500 g, cut into 2 cm pieces |
| 1 small piece | ginger , julienned |
| 1 tbsp | Shaoxing wine |
| 3 tbsp | light soy sauce |
| 2 tbsp | cornflour |
| 1/2 tsp | ground white pepper |
| 3 | garlic cloves , sliced |
| 40 g | dried chillies , snipped into sections, seeds shaken out |
| 1 tbsp | Sichuan peppercorns |
| 3 | scallions , sliced |
| 1 tbsp | sesame seeds |
| to taste | salt |
| 500 ml | oil , for frying |
Method
- Mix the chicken with the ginger, wine, 2 tbsp of the soy sauce, the pepper and the cornflour, and leave it for 30 minutes.
- Heat the oil to about 160C and fry the chicken in batches until it is cooked through and pale gold, then drain.
- Raise the oil to about 190C and fry the pieces again briefly, until the edges darken and sound hard. Drain on a rack, not paper.
- Pour off all but a tablespoon of oil, add the garlic, Sichuan pepper and the remaining soy sauce and fry until fragrant.
- Add the chillies and stir for less than a minute, until they smell toasted but have not darkened.
- Tip the chicken back in, toss hard to coat, then finish with sesame seeds and scallion.
Notes
- Fry in two stages, not one. A single long fry dries the meat out before the crust forms.
- Shake the seeds out of the chillies. They burn faster than the skins and turn the whole dish bitter.
Ratios and technique checked against 青柠食记 on Douguo (辣子鸡丁，麻辣鲜香). The method here is written by Stellaok and the illustration is ours; no text or photograph from the source is reproduced.