Kung Pao chicken is the first dish that fired my passion for food. Everyone who loves food has early memories of the precious few times that tasting a new dish changed everything they thought about what food – and the pleasure we get from food – could be. And part of cooking foods from our past is an attempt to re-experience the magic of tasting these foods for the first time. Smell and taste are closely tied to memory, which is why the best cook we ever meet is the person (usually, mom) who cooked for us when we were small and just learning what we like and what we don’t.
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, a town famous for barbecue… and not much else food-wise at the time. Going out to eat meant simple American fare. Pondarosa Steakhouse was a favorite, mostly because it had a large salad bar. Red Lobster was for special occasions. And Chinese food was the standard Cantonese-American cuisine of the time – beef with broccoli, chop suey, etc. Crab Rangoon was the popular appetizer (to be honest: I still love Crab Rangoon). And I was a picky eater as a kid – didn’t like vegetables, didn’t like stews, didn’t like much of anything that didn’t come from a can or a box. Lunch for me was Uh Oh SpaghettiOs with Sliced Franks, RavioliOs, and mac and cheese (Kraft, of course).
Then, as my parents started building a modest real estate business in the northeast part of the city, they found a Chinese restaurant called North East China Restaurant. Despite the name, the restaurant specialized in cuisine from the south of China – Szechuan and Hunan.
Remember these?
Back in the 80’s, it seemed like every Chinese restaurant served food in these. So we go North East China Restaurant, we order pot stickers and kung pao chicken, and they are served in these tins that reveal everything you need to know with a puff of delicious steam when the lid is raised.
Little kid mind blown. Flavors I’d never smelled or tasted before – ginger, charred peanuts, salty and sour with fiery dark red chilis. Not many vegetables that I remember, but that was fine with me!
Nowadays, Kung Pao Chicken in restaurants is often a disappointment. The flavors are muted, the chicken is rubbery, and cheap vegetables fill it out. Panda Express is typical of what you get these days – basically chicken in tasteless brown sauce with a few raw peanuts stirred in.
But Kung Pao can be a transcendent dish, so let’s get cooking and make it right! There are a couple of hard to find ingredients here, but there are good, easy to find substitutes. And this recipe doesn’t use the traditional Szechuan peppercorns, which were illegal to import into the U.S. until 2005 (and still aren’t easy to find). If you have these, I’d recommend trying the recipe “as is” below – the peppercorns drastically change the flavor of the dish, and frankly I prefer the recipe without them. But if you decide to use them, throw them in at the end with the peanuts and chilis.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ pounds chicken breast
- ½ cup peanuts
- 6-8 dried red chilis
- 1 inch cube of fresh ginger, minced
- 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons oil (neutral flavored – canola, vegetable, grapeseed)
- 3-4 green onions, sliced into one inch pieces
- 1 cup of vegetables of your choice, diced – good options include zucchini, red peppers, broccoli)
Marinade ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing cooking wine (or dry sherry)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon white pepper
- 2 teaspoons corn starch
- 1 tablespoon oil (neutral flavored – canola, vegetable, grapeseed)
Cooking sauce ingredients:
- 3 tablespoons light soy sauce (reduced sodium is good here)
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons black vinegar (or a cheap balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, or even 1 ½ tablespoons white distilled vinegar)
- 2 tablespoons Shaoxing cooking wine (or dry sherry)
- 1 tablespoon sugar or sugar substitute
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon Sri Racha or other chili paste (optional, to taste)
- 3 tablespoons water or chicken stock
Steps:
- Dice the chicken and combine with the marinade. Let marinate about 15 minutes.
- Dice your vegetables, mince your garlic and ginger, and make the cooking sauce. I like to use a shaker for the sauce.
- Heat a hot over medium-high heat and add a tablespoon oil. Add the peanuts and the chilis and stir fry until the peanuts and chilis are lightly charred (see photo below). Remove from the wok into a bowl and set aside.
- Stir fry your vegetables (not including the onion) until partially cooked but still crisp (usually 1-2 minutes, or 3-4 minutes for starchy vegetables like carrots or bigger pieces like broccoli). Remove from the wok into a bowl and set aside.
- Add the other tablespoon of oil and increase heat to high. Add the garlic and ginger and stir fry for 30 seconds.
- Add the chicken and stir fry for about 3 minutes, JUST until all the pink is gone.
- Add the green onions, stir fry for 1-2 minutes.
- Add your vegetables, stir fry for 1 minutes.
- Add the charred peanuts and chilis, stir fry for 1 minute.
- Stir (or shake!) your cooking sauce so the cornstarch dissolves. Add to the wok and stir fry for 1-2 minutes. Season to taste – don’t be afraid to add more vinegar or sugar. It should be quite sour with enough sweetness, salt and heat to add balance.
- Serve over rice or rice replacement.
OK, a few tips!
Mincing ginger – even more fun than mincing garlic! Peel your ginger root, then slice thinly across the grain (very important, ginger can be very fibrous). Then take each quarter-sized slice and SMASH with the side of your chef’s knife. It should look like this:
Once you’ve smashed the ginger, mince it with your knife a little to be sure all the pieces are tiny.
Get a little salad shaker for mixing the sauce – Oxo makes a good one. (Oxo makes a lot of good stuff; their smooth edge can opener is a life changer.) You’ll find it super useful for salad dressings. I also sometimes use old jelly jars – the ones by Bonne Maman are particularly easy to use and clean.
The peanuts and chilis are done when they are lightly charred – mine looked like this:
I used yellow squash and red peppers. Here is what they looked like when they were done when stir frying them.
The hard part with stir fries is making sure the veggies are all cooked but not too soft – you want the veggies to have some crispness and bite. Vegetables all cook at different times, usually varying by size and starchiness, which is why I recommend stir frying each one separately and tasting to make sure it’s ready. Sometimes the veggies benefit from a little steaming in addition to stir frying – broccoli typically falls in this category. To steam, just add ¼ cup water to your hot wok.
Do not be afraid of high heat here – woks need to be super hot to work right. Just keep stir frying constantly so things don’t burn.
A couple notes on the ingredients:
Shaoxing cooking wine can be found in most Asian markets. Dry sherry is a fine substitute – both are inexpensive and versatile in Chinese and Taiwanese cooking. Sherry obviously has more uses – including drinking it straight! You can even use a sweet or cream sherry in this dish – just go lighter on the sugar or omit it altogether.
Black vinegar is a little harder to find, but well worth it. The best I can describe it is “Chinese balsamic” – it has similar rich, slightly sweet notes. I used Kong Yen brand from Taiwan – it’s very good, almost like a steak sauce, and I use it for dipping pot stickers. But here you can use rice vinegar or even plain white vinegar.
I do recommend getting a bottle of DARK soy sauce. What we commonly use is technically “light” soy sauce. Dark soy adds sweetness and a compelling dark color to whatever you make. Lee Kum Kee is usually easy to find; Pearl River Bridge is a little cheaper – be sure to look for the word “DARK”:
That’s it for now! Next week, we review another restaurant.
Happy eating!
All Thyme Great 