Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Mom's Kitchen: Easy Chinese Salt & Pepper Chicken

A long-time favorite, Salt & Pepper (Jiao Yan) anything is a big hit with the family.  It complements a simple bowl of rice or a plate of salad.  The typical chicken preparation for this uses chicken wings or dark meat, but the kids and I are lazy about bones and prefer white to dark meat.  Feel free to use what you like!


Prep Time: ~15 minutes 

Cooking Time: ~15 minutes

Ingredients
  • 1 Chicken Breast (or chicken wings, dark meat, etc.)
  • 1 tbsp Minced Garlic
  • Cooking Oil (enough to submerge your chicken)
  • Corn Starch (enough to coat your chicken)
  • Dried Chili Pepper
  • Salt and White Pepper
  • Sprinkle of Chinese Five-Spice Powder
  • Green Onions (optional)
  • Fresh Jalapeno (optional)
Directions:
  • Coat your chicken using a mixture of corn starch with dashes of salt and pepper.  Coat evenly.

  • Heat up your oil.  Once hot, toss in your chicken to fry.  Do not stir!  Wait until it looks like the batter has solidified, otherwise your coating will fall off.
  • Once evenly fried (~5 min), let chicken cool a little bit on a paper towel.  After a few minutes of cooling, place it back in the oil for a quick flash fry.  This ensures it will stay crisp throughout the meal.

  • In a pan, heat up a little oil.  Saute garlic and green onions.  Toss in your seasonings and chicken. Stir well to coat.


Enjoy!

I'm thinking about uploading cooking videos on YouTube - is that preferable to pictures / text?

10 comments:

  1. Looks yummy though I hate frying :(. I like pix/text because then I don't have to reach for my headphones (I'm so lazy). But I'm sure other readers love vids.

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  2. I prefer text recipes versus video unless it's a special cooking technique that needs demonstration. Pictures and text is usually enough.

    And thanks for the recipe! trying it this week :)

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  3. Text recipes work better for me! And I'm making this sometime this weekend - yummy!

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  4. that looks delicious!!! i prefer text and photo recipes unless there is something complicated that has to be shown.

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  5. This looks really good! I miss the food my mom used to cook, and lazy daughter that I am, I never bothered to learn them all that well when I was at home. Now I'm scouring blogs for the recipes I remember, and I'm so glad that you've started posting them!
    I like the written/pictures! It's nice to skip to to the recipe and different steps instead of having to watch the entire video!

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  6. Ladies - thanks so much! You just saved me a lot of video editing time :)

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  7. Keep them recipes rolling! I can tell by the ingredients and your pictures that these are yummy! I entirely trust your palate, haha! Archiving this recipe! :)

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  8. Question: How did you learn to make all these dishes? I feel like my mom never imparts on this type of knowledge on me.

    7% Solution

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    Replies
    1. LOL - still learning - helps that my Mom lives with us :) I'm sure if you asked, your Mom'd be happy to share.

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I'm the type of gal who gets giddy when I receive mail - it's no different with comments! I really appreciate the feedback and love hearing from you :)