Kung Pao Chicken is a highly addictive stir-fried chicken with the perfect combination of salty, sweet and spicy flavour!
Make Kung Pao Chicken better than Chinese take out right at home! With crisp-tender, mouthwatering chicken pieces swimming in the most delicious silky Chinese sauce exploding with flavour, this is one Kung Pao chicken recipe hard to pass up!
One of your most requested recipes is finally here!
Easy Kung Pao Chicken Recipe
Traditionally, this Chinese chicken dish is a dry-stir fry — not a lot of sauce is added into Kung Pao chicken. However, with the amount of flavour explosions happening in this dish, you don’t miss OR want any more sauce. There’s so much flavour in this it’s crazy!
What is velveting
A meat tenderising technique used by Chinese restaurants and it’s super easy.
First, you’re going to marinate chicken pieces in a mixture of cornstarch, baking soda (YES) and Chinese wine (or sherry or rice wine. You can also use vinegar!) Then you’re going to quickly fry them in hot oil before finishing them off in the stir-fry with other ingredients. The cornstarch/soy/wine marinade not only provides amazing flavour to the chicken, it acts like a protective coating which seals moisture inside the chicken, creating beautiful golden edges while preventing the chicken from overcooking.
Kung Pao Sauce
The perfect time to prepare your sauce is while your chicken is marinating. Having everything ready before you start a stir fry is essential — and the sauce is the most important part! Well, besides the chicken.
Once your chicken is done, add in your sauce and watch it bubble and turn into a beautiful, slightly thick and silky sauce, coating each piece of chicken perfectly.
Kung Pao Stir Fry
There are 6 main ingredients in the sauce to make the perfect Kung Pao Chicken:
- Chicken broth or stock (use low sodium) — you can also use water if you don’t have any broth on hand!
- Light soy — use light or low sodium if you can. Regular soy creates a really salty sauce for this recipe.
- Dark Soy Sauce — adds beautiful colour and flavour to the sauce!
- Hoisin sauce — more depth of flavour!
- Chinese black vinegar — or a good quality balsamic vinegar can be used instead.
- Chinese wine (Shaoxing) — to substitute you can use any of the following: dry sherry, gin, rice wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar.
For the stir fry, I’ve included broth red and green bell peppers (or capsicums) and the traditional roasted peanuts. You can also add in diced celery, sliced carrots and/or zucchini!
Sichuan peppercorns (Szechuan pepper)
We can’t call it Kung Pao Chicken if there’s no Sichuan (or Szechuan) pepper! They provide delicious mouth-numbing heat! Find them in Asian grocery stores and supermarkets, or Chinatown shops (even gourmet chains such as Whole Foods).
To toast them, add to a dry pan, wok or skillet over medium heat. Stir for about one minute until fragrant. Then transfer to a mortar and pestle to grind.
Looking for more stir fry recipes? Try these!
Simple Chicken Teriyaki Stir Fry | Sesame Beef Stir Fry | Honey Soy Chicken Stir Fry
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