Kung Pao Chicken is easily available at economy rice stalls, Chinese restaurants or at Chinese seafood shops. This dish originated from China and has been very popular in Asia too.
This Kung Pao Chicken is very delicious and it’s my family’s favourite. Let’s start with the recipe.
Marinated Ingredients
- 500 grams chicken fillets (cut into 1 cm slices)
- 1 teaspoon ginger paste
- ¼ teaspoon white pepper
- 1 ½ tablespoon heaped plain flour
- 6 tablespoons water
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
Other Ingredients
- 6 dried chilli (cut into 1 cm length and soak in normal water)
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 12 slices of ginger (finely sliced)
- 1 medium onion (cut into 6 then open petals)
- 2 tablespoon spring onions (cut into 1 inch length)
- 18 cashew kernels fried (cashew nuts that have been split)
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon light soya sauce
- 1 teaspoon dark soya sauce
- 1 tablespoon chilli sauce
- ½ teaspoon cornflour mix with ⅓ cup of water
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon Chinese cooking wine
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1 cup oil for frying the chicken
Method
- Marinate all the marinated ingredients and leave it aside for a minimum of 20 minutes.
- Now take a wok or a pan and pour in 1 cup of oil on high flame. Fry all marinated chicken in a few batches until it’s all done. Fry for 1 to 1.5 minutes only. Keep aside.
- Now fry all the split cashew nuts on low flame. Once it’s slightly pink, take it out and keep it aside.
- Now take a clean pan on medium flame and put in 2 tablespoons of oil. Add garlic, ginger and dried chilli together and saute for 1 minute.
- Put in the fried chicken and mix well. Add onion petals.
- Add oyster sauce, light soya sauce, dark soya sauce and chilli sauce to the chicken. Cook it for 1 minute.
- Finally add spring onions, the cornflour slurry, saute for another 30 seconds, once it thickens slightly, switch off the flame.
- Lastly add sesame seed oil, Chinese cooking wine and the cashew nuts. Done! Your Awesome Kung Pao Chicken is ready.
Final thoughts:
- Don’t fry the chicken for too long or else it will become hard.
- If you need to add more corn flour, you may do so and adjust the consistency. The chicken is marinated with flour, therefore you do not need more corn flour.
- This chicken is best eaten with hot jasmine rice.
Lina Binwani is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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