A traditional Sichuan style dish, featured in The Big Bang Theory (which episode?). Note: can be too spicy.
Time
30 min
Ingredients
chicken: 1 lb (for best result, use thigh meat) dried red chili: 1 cup (break into halves for more heat) decorative stuffs: 1 cup. Choose peanut, walnut, or diced carrot… sugar: 2 TBSP ginger: 1 tsp, minced garlic: 3 piece salt: to taste. note: don’t use any sauce.
Preparation
- Trim excess fat from chicken, dice chicken to match dried chili sizes (1/5-1 inch), add salt and set aside.
- Heat trimmed chicken fat in a large non-sticking frying pan, to extract oil. Add cooling oil to make up the total oil to about 4 TBSP.
- Scoop out the solid fat residuals, add sugar to pan and keep heating until brown.
- Watch out and pour chicken carefully on top of sugar melt once the sugar turned into desired browness. Shake the pan gently during the process for even heat.
- Shake the pan gently to spread chicken flat. Wait about 20 seconds to fry the bottom of the chicken, then stir. Add ginger and garlic
- Chicken will release water, stir fry until water evaporates, in about 10 minutes. reduce heat gradually.
- Add dried red chili and decorative stuffs when water is almost evaporated and oil become is noticeable.
- Dish is done when chicken reaches desired dry level. Plate with chives or rosemary.
Notes
- Optionally add some Lao Gan Ma chili sauce for shiny red color.
- Fry dried chili in separate pan with sesame before use for better presentation and less spiciness.