Szechuan Chicken is a popular Chinese takeout amongst fans of Asian food. Especially those who love spicy food and crave that "Ma" spiciness. The stir-fry is an irresistible mix of meat and vegetables. Our Szechuan chicken dish tastes spicy, slightly sweet, and has a lingering mouth-numbing sensation.
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What Is It?
Szechuan chicken is a spicy dish of tender chicken pieces and vegetables fried together. Chinese chefs usually cook it with sweet soy sauce, spicy peppercorns, and minced ginger and garlic.
This dish often appears at the Asian family table, especially in Szechuan. Hot dishes like this are popular since the region is known for its high humidity and rainy weather.
Szechuan Chicken Ingredients
Here are the main ingredients you'll need to make Szechuan chicken:
- Chicken meat
- Light soy sauce
- Shaoxing wine
- Cornstarch
- Chinese five-spice
- Salt
- White pepper
- Sugar
- Vegetable oil
- Vegetables
- Yellow onion, cut into half-moon slices
- Spring onions, chopped to 1-inch pieces
- Dried red chilli
- Aromatics
- Garlic, minced
- Fresh ginger, julienned
- Szechuan peppercorns
- White sesame seeds
- Chilli bean paste
Chicken meat
You can use chicken thighs, wings, or breast cuts to cook our authentic Szechuan chicken recipe. Thighs have a tougher and chewier texture. Meanwhile, if you make Szechuan chicken wings, these will turn out to be crispier than breast meat but will take about 20 minutes to fry.
For our recipe, we'll use breast meat as the texture compared to wings and thighs is much more tender. You need about 10 minutes to fry the breasts, which cooks quicker.
Szechuan Peppercorns
If possible, look for Sichuan Peppercorns in Asian supermarkets. Many restaurants use them in Chinese hotpot cuisines. However, if you can't find these, you can buy peppercorns at the grocers or use crushed black pepper as a substitute.
Any fragrant medium-hot chilli pepper with thin skin is acceptable for the chillies.
Chinese rice wine
Chinese rice wine is a must-have if you love Chinese cooking. It is also known as Shao Xing wine, but any rice wine can substitute it if you cannot find it in Asian supermarkets.
Chinese 5 spice
While the Chinese five-spice is recommended for this dish, it is not essential. It adds a distinct flavour but is quite subtle.
The Sichuan peppercorns, dried chillies, and Chili bean paste highlight this dish's prominent flavour. Try not to omit these, as they are staple ingredients in Chinese cooking. You'll be able to reuse many of these for other Chinese dishes, too.
Szechuan Sauce
You can make Szechuan sauce as a marinade to prepare Szechuan chicken. However, as it contains raw ingredients, you must cook it in a pan or wok before consuming it.
You can make the marinade by combining:
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 2-3 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon white pepper
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon chilli bean paste
- 4 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 10-15 dried red chilli
- 4 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 inch fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns
If you want to make it into an easy sauce, first blend the raw ingredients. Then, mix all the condiment ingredients except for vegetable oil. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, and finally, pour over some hot vegetable oil and mix well. Your sauce is now ready for use.
Some recipes include chicken stock. However, this is optional. You can make the Szechuan sauce vegan-friendly by excluding or replacing the animal-based stock with vegetable stock.
The sauce of this dish is a favourite of spicy food enthusiasts as it adds flavour without overpowering other ingredients. You can also use the sauce for dishes such as fish or vegetables.
Szechuan Chicken Recipe | Chinese Takeout Dish
Ingredients
For the chicken marinade:
- 650 g chicken breasts boneless, skinless
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 2 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
For the stir-fry:
- 1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon chilli bean paste
- 10-15 small dried red chillis
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- ½ medium onion
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 inch fresh ginger julienned
- 4 medium spring onions chopped
- 1 tablespoon white sesame seeds
- 4 tablespoon vegetable oil
Instructions
- Make the chicken marinade by combining light soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, Chinese five-spice, cornstarch, salt, and white pepper. Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and add them to a bowl. Pour the marinade over the chicken and mix well. Let the meat marinate for 30 minutes. While waiting, cut the yellow onions into half moons, mince the garlic, julienne the ginger, and chop the scallions.
- Add a tablespoon of oil to a pan or wok, and let the pan and oil heat up under medium-high heat. Once it is hot, fry the chicken for 3-4 minutes or until golden brown. Remove the chicken from the pan or wok and set it aside.
- Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan or work, followed by the onion and dried chillies. Fry them under medium-high heat for about 1-2 minutes until the onions start to brown slightly and the skin of the chilli starts to char slightly. Push the onions and chillies to the side of the pan or wok.
- Lower the heat to medium, and add the remaining two tablespoons of oil to the pan or wok. Add the garlic, ginger, Szechuan peppercorns, and white sesame seeds, and fry for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Then, add the remaining Chili bean paste, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and sugar. Stir in the fried chicken to mix with the rest of the ingredients in the pan or wok.
- Finally, throw in the chopped spring onions and sesame seeds. Then enjoy your Szechuan chicken.
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Ingredient Substitutes
If you cannot find chilli bean paste (doubanjiang), we recommend replacing it with Korean red pepper paste (Gochujang) with a 1 to 1 ratio. It's not an exact substitute, as the Korean gochujang is less spicy and slightly sweeter, but it is a convenient alternative that we use all the time.
Ideally, cornstarch should be used because it helps to give the chicken a crispy texture when fried. Otherwise, potato starch is a close substitute, which will also help give that crunchy exterior.
From what we know, many Chinese takeaway restaurants use cornstarch and potato starch interchangeably when preparing batter for frying meat. Another acceptable substitute is rice flour. Rice flour is gluten-free and can also thicken your batter. However, it is not as crunchy as a cornstarch or potato starch coating.
You can also use all-purpose flour for the batter. However, the exterior will not be as crunchy when fried.
Szechuan Chicken Cooking Tips
Based on our readers' feedback, we've added some cooking tips for beginners using a wok or cooking Chinese food for the first time. Some of this information may be irrelevant for more experienced home cooks.
Use A Wok
Ideally, try using a wok or deep-dish pan to stir-fry the meat. A wok has a large surface area and retains heat. Since Szechuan chicken is a spicy stir-fry, you must prepare all your ingredients before turning on the heat and oil your wok or frying pan. Once you heat your frying pan, move quickly to avoid burning your ingredients.
Most stir-frying starts with oil between 325 and 375 degrees, but the temperature drops as you add food, and it should remain somewhere between 250 and 325 degrees. You can use a clip-on deep-fry thermometer to maintain the oil temperature.
Do Not Overheat Your Oil
You need to watch out for smoking oil. The smoking oil indicates that the temperature is too high, and your food will taste charred. But if your oil is too cool, your dish will turn soggy. So, bring your oil temperature back to your target range before you start cooking your authentic Szechuan chicken recipe.
Stir-Frying Aromatics
While cooking fast over high heat is ideal for a stir-fry dish, there is an exception. It is important to make sure you cook your aromatics over low to medium heat. This is because aromatics burn easily. If you add them and cook them under high heat, they will taint your dish.
So, make sure you control your heat when adding your aromatics. If they burn, you can always add more aromatics if you need them.
How To Cut Your Ingredients
We recommend cutting the chicken and vegetables using the 'sogigiri' method.
This just means making diagonal cuts to help increase the surface area of the meat or vegetables. In this way, you ensure that the ingredients can contact the heat. It gives the food more flavour.
Control The Batter Thickness To Your Liking
The batter depends on how crispy you prefer your Szechuan chicken. Similar to how to make lemon chicken Chinese style, add more cornstarch for a crispier and thicker batter.
Szechuan Chicken Using An Air Fryer or Oven
If you're health conscious, use an air fryer or oven to cook the chicken. However, you will still need a wok or pan to stir-fry the rest of the ingredients. So it is more hassle with more things to prepare.
To cook chicken in the air fryer, set it to 200 degrees Celsius (or around 400 Fahrenheit). Fry for 5-8 minutes before flipping the meat over.
To bake Szechuan chicken in the oven, you must preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit). You must roast the meat for 15 minutes before lowering the oven temperature to around 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). Then, continue roasting for another 30 minutes until you thoroughly cook the meat.
Variations
Szechuan chicken rice is a popular dish, but adding noodles is another way to enjoy it. Some people like to eat it on its own. It's a trendy street food.
However, you can add Szechuan chicken with broccoli and rice for a main meal. The crunchy, raw flavour of broccoli helps balance the dish's spiciness. We recommend blanching the broccoli in advance and then adding it to the stir fry at the end (at the same time as adding the spring onions).
Another variety we love is adding cashew nuts, which gives the dish a crunchy bite. First, to make this version, you want to fry raw cashew nuts with a drizzle of sesame oil in a pan or wok. Fry using medium-low heat until most of the cashews start to brown. Then, set them aside. Stir them into your Sichuan chicken dish and add the very end to incorporate it with the dish.
Szechuan chicken is a wonderfully spicy dish you can enjoy on a nice, cold day. If you've tried cooking it, tag us on Instagram @honestfoodtalks with pictures of your creations.
Are you looking for another classic Chinese fakeaway recipe? Here's our definitive guide to making authentic Chinese salt and pepper chicken.
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